


Declaration

by lyrisey



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Body Horror, F/M, Literal Corn (not the fanfic kind), Typos, deadnaming
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:55:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 27
Words: 23,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21624910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyrisey/pseuds/lyrisey
Summary: Taylor Hebert (and the rest of the world) learn about interdimensional corn subsidies.
Relationships: Taylor Hebert | Skitter | Weaver/Weld (Parahumans)
Comments: 149
Kudos: 161





	1. Chapter 1

It's dark. Almost all dark, save for twinkling stars that spark to life in my peripheral vision, but vanish when I go to look at them.

"Love what you've done with the locker."

The stars flicker and whirl into the center of my vision, forming words.

THANK YOU  
SPENSER

"My name's not Spenser."

The last line shimmers and rewrites itself.

SPENSER HEBERT

"No, I'm Taylor. _Taylor_ Hebert."

More shimmering.

TAYLOR SPENSER HEBERT  
SPENSER TAYLOR HEBERT

I'm not sure I want to pursue this any further down the rabbit hole. "What is this place? Where am I?"

SPENSER  
SPENSER TAYLOR HEBERT

WE ARE SORRY  
VERY SORRY  
WE ARE _VERY_ SORRY

"Sorry about _what_?"

YOU HAD A TRIGGER SPENSER  
IN THE LOCKER

"A trig- wait, like a _superpower_ trigger?"

YES SPENSER

"My name isn't _Spenser_."

IT IS  
NOW  
AND WE ARE SORRY ABOUT THAT

ALSO YOU DO NOT HAVE A SUPERPOWER  
OR SUPERPOWERS

WE ARE SORRY ABOUT THAT TOO

"What."

WE WERE IN THE VICINITY  
WHEN YOU HAD THE TRIGGER

WE INTERVENED

" _How_?"

DID YOU SEE WORMS?  
WHEN YOU SEE WORMS YOU GET A SUPERPOWER  
WE ARE PRETTY SURE ABOUT THAT ONE

"...I-"

IT IS OKAY IF YOU DID NOT SEE WORMS SPENSER  
THAT IS A MINOR SIDE EFFECT  
BUT IF YOU WANTED TO SEE WORMS

WE ARE SORRY  
YES VERY SORRY

WE WILL MAKE IT UP TO YOU SPENSER TAYLOR HEBERT  
SOME OF OUR ESSENCE  
OUR NOT-WORMLIKE ESSENCE

I clutched my head as something pushed into it, tentacles pressing through my skull and massaging my brain until I saw pineapple on my tongue.

IT IS YOURS NOW SPENSER  
ALONG WITH OUR APOLOGIES

NOW WE WILL RETURN YOU TO THE PLACE AND TIME YOU ARE FROM  
IT IS A RULE

WE UNDERSTAND THAT YOUR TIME AND PLACE ARE EXCRUCIATINGLY UNPLEASANT  
WE ARE SORRY

Without moving an inch, my locker catapulted into existence around me and I screamed as _Filth_ and _Rot_ and _Stench_ battered my senses, battering my fists against the door which resolutely remained _Closed._

I had to get out. I braced myself against the back of my locker and _pushed_ at the door, wanting it to _Open_ -

-and I felt something twist and _pop_ , but in my mind not my arms, and then the door wasn't _Closed_ anymore-

-and I pulled myself out of my locker, gasping for the taste of clean air.

A girl screamed. I didn't really care.

* * *

Someone put a blanket around me, _Musty_ and _Rough_ and _Warm_ and I sat there with _Stench_ and _Filth_ caked on my clothes, holding that piece of _Closed_ that I had twisted off and turning it over and over in my head.

I looked up and saw Mr. Gladly. We made eye contact and he came over to kneel by me.

"Spenser?" he asked, his voice soft and kind.

I stared at him, eyes wide, no sound escaping my open mouth.

"It's okay, you don't need to say anything."

"Shower-" I croak, voice hoarse and mouth dry.

His eyes fill with sadness. "Spenser... the police are coming. They... you're evidence now."

* * *

My bare feet touch the tile floor, and I can feel how each tile is _Slippery_ and _Breakable and Cemented_ into place

 _Closed_ , my head echoes. _Closed_ , _Closed_ , _Closed._

My hand bunches against the shower curtain as I pull it closed, and my head fills with the knowledge of how the curtain is _Waterproof_ and _Mildewed_ and _Flexible_.

Water runs onto my head, soaks into my hair, trickles in runnels down me, _Wet_ and _Hot_ and _Liquid_ and _Drinkable_ -

I turn the heat up and try to focus on how the soap stings my cuts and scrapes.

* * *

The clothes in my athletics locker are untouched, for once.

* * *

Dad pulls up in his truck as one of the EMTs finishes bandaging the raw wounds on my arms, the bandages whispering _Sterile_ into my head for a moment before that dissolves.

"Spenser!" he shouts, and I finally start to cry because _he doesn't know my name_.

"Dad," I sniffle, and then he's upon me with arms wrapped tight and _Starched_ and _Businesswear_ and a hundred other words force their way into me and I have to gasp and push him away.

He looks at me with worry and hurt in his eyes, hands curling into fists as he finally comprehends the bandages on my arms.

"Taylor, what happened? The school just called and said I needed to come over right away-"

He stops as tears begin to run down my face in earnest, reaching over and taking my hand in his, hearing the song of his wedding ring as it is _Ductile_ and _Conductive_.

"It... it was-" I hiccup, blotting at my eyes. "Dad..." _I was going to die_ , I think, but I can't say it without wanting to curl up and bawl.

"Taylor..." His voice is warm like his hand on mine, and I'm suddenly aware that this is the first time we've touched in... a month? Two?

"Can we... I want to go home." My voice is trembling.

Dad looks at the EMT.

"She was exposed to..." He makes a face, swallows. "She needs a doctor."

"Fine," Dad says as he reaches over to put a hand on my shoulder. "I'm driving."

* * *

He ends up driving one-handed, his other hand resting with mine by the gearshift.

"Dad?" My voice is quiet, and I don't like how anxious I sound.

He looks over at me. "What- are you feeling okay, sweetheart?"

I force a smile.

"Dad? What's my name?"

He smiles back. "Spenser? Spenser Taylor Hebert, if you want to get fancy."

I pull my hand from his and his smile fades. "What's wrong?"

"...can you call me Taylor? Please?"

He looks back at the road. "Sure, honey." He sounds worried. More worried than he was before.

I turn away and press my forehead against the car window, trying to lose myself in _Shatter-Resistant_ and _Transparent_ and _Frangible_.


	2. Chapter 2

I tried not to touch anything at the hospital, flinching a little as the needles went _Sharp_ and _Sterile_ and _Unused_ into my skin.

We talked to doctors - _Dad_ talked to doctors while I sat on the examination bed, listening dully as they talked about _prophylaxis_ and _infection_ and _antibiotics_.

A nurse came in to take my blood and call me Spenser.

"...how do you know I'm 'Spenser'?" I finally asked.

He looked up at me with startling green eyes. "Because that's your name."

"But you just came in here, you haven't looked at my medical papers or anyth-"

"Chart," the doctor interrupted cheerily. "It's called a chart."

"You didn't look at my _chart_ ," I continued, "And we've never met before, so _how do you know my name?_ "

The room was silent and I looked up to see my dad and the doctor staring at me, surprised by my outburst.

"Sorry," I finally said quietly. "But my name's Taylor."

* * *

We didn't say anything as we drove home.

Dad kept on giving me worried looks when he thought I wasn't looking.

I tried not to look back, staring blankly at buildings as they slowly passed by.

Everyone I'd met called me Spenser.

Even when I'd never met them before.

Even when there was no reason for them to know my name in the first place.

...as far as superpowers went, this was a bit shit.

* * *

I pounded up the stairs to my room, ignoring whatever he was saying as I closed the door behind me and flopped facedown on my bed.

I would've cried, but all I had left in me was just fatigue that didn't seem to go away and a sort of quiet numbness that filled my head until I descended into sleep.

My dreams were full of lockers, opening and closing their doors in bizarre synchrony, forming elegant patterns that I could almost predict-

I woke up sweating as someone knocked loudly on my door.

"Taylor?" my dad called. "Are you awake?"

"Nneh?" my mouth said.

"Taylor?"

"'M'wake."

"Dinner's ready."

"'K."

I sat on the edge of my bed, listened to my dad's footsteps down the stairs and the thing inside me saying _Soft, Cloth, Insulating, Impact-absorbing_ until it faded into the back of my head like the ticking of a grandfather clock.

I wasn't tired anymore, but numbness still hung off me, pinning my thoughts down like wet cotton.

 _Black swan_ , I thought vaguely, remembering something Dad had said once. A thing that occurs completely outside your experience. _I'm a black swan._

Part of me wanted to be rational, wanted to use the word _Parahuman_ to describe what I'd become, wanted to tell a story about how I'd lived through something terrible and emerged with strange new abilities that uprooted my world and gave me a future.

I didn't want to think about a future right now, imagining the different ways to use my power and where they might take my life.

I wanted to be a numb little black swan, sitting on my bed and just _existing_.

But Dad had dinner waiting. Dad wanted to talk to me, make sure I was all right. I could be numb downstairs.

My bedroom door was closed, so I got up and opened my window. Twelve feet was a little high for jumping, but maybe I could use the drainpipe from the gutter...

...why was I doing this? I never climbed out of my window to get downstairs, I'd always used the door-

The door was closed.

But I'd opened it when I came in earlier! I could just go over and-

The door was _closed_.

I stood there for a moment, just thinking. Processing the silence in my head.

And then I closed my window, walked over, and placed my hand on my door.

 _Painted,_ it whispered. _Painted, Wooden, Hollow..._ and **_Closed._**

I tensed an unknown muscle, felt **_Closed_** become _Closed_ , both in the door and the copy that sprang into my mind.

My hand went to the doorknob. Turned. Pulled.

The door opened, and I smiled a little.

As far as superpowers went... this had potential.


	3. Chapter 3

Dinner was reheated meatloaf and microwaved peas and Dad trying to care about my school life again.

"I thought you said they stopped."

_They did. Guess they exceeded my expectations, huh?_

_Savory_ , my mouthful supplied as I chewed. _Non-Homogenous, Masticated._

I swallowed.

"Taylor..." He looked at me with tired eyes that shouted _'You hurt more than I do right now, let me care about you.'_

"Please. Let me do _something_."

 _Thawed_ , the peas said as they rolled off my fork into my mouth. _Spherical_.

 _Closed_ , echoed the thing from my locker in odd counterpoint.

"One of the police officers wanted me to call when you would be up for talking to them. Would tomorrow be okay for that?"

_Pointed. Ductile, Reflective, Conductive, Malleable..._

"You're not going back there, Taylor. I promise."

I stared down at my empty fork. I'd run out of food.

"Sure," I finally said, my voice soft and rough. "May I please be excused?"

* * *

Dad didn't say anything as I dumped my dishes in the sink then made my way upstairs to my room.

I closed the door behind me. Left my hand on the knob for a few seconds to listen and make sure I hadn't **_Closed_** -closed it; I'd been lucky Dad hadn't wanted to come in last time.

This had to be something I could control. That I had control _over_.

That meant one thing.

Power testing.

* * *

At least, _preparing_ for power testing.

I'd pulled out a spare composition book ( _Flexible, Flammable, Fibrous_ ) with the intention of using it to log experiments and my conclusions, but the idea of _just writing it down_ and leaving it for anyone to see just raised the hackles on the back of my neck.

That would be all I needed, my dad coming in and stumbling across my 'secret diary' of how I had powers... or _Emma_ getting into my backpack. Or locker, but that was a forgone conclusion after what had happened today.

The problem was that I knew next to nothing about how to keep something like this a secret; Da Vinci did something with writing in a mirror, and I remembered that you could use lemon juice to write invisible messages.

Maybe I could hit the library tomorrow, since Dad wasn't letting me go back to school.

For now? I figured I could do some experimentation and write down the results later.

* * *

_Hypothesis One: My power is touch-ranged._

I _assumed_ it was. After all, things were telling me what they _were_ whenever I touched them, but it wasn't science if I didn't examine my assumptions.

I touched the drawer on my desk, confirmed the presence of _Closed_. Then tried to pull it forth using only my winsome looks...

...my fulgrous gaze...

...my mordant will.

...yeah. Touch power.

* * *

_Hypothesis Two: My power requires skin contact._

Unfortunately, easy to test. A sheet of paper ( _Flexible, Fibrous, Foldable_ ) between my fingertip and the drawer was enough to stop me from feeling my drawer or my desk, and kept me from pulling a _Closed_ out.

Darn. _Fingerless gloves, maybe?_

* * *

_Hypothesis Three: 'Pushing' stuff into things requires some degree of effort._

I squinted at my mind's eye. _Really?_

Okay. Arbitrary decree of science. 'Things' are 'objects', 'stuff' is 'the properties of objects.

_Hypothesis Three Point One: 'Pushing' the properties of objects into different objects requires some degree of effort._

This had been bothering me since before dinner. If a passing thought was all it took to make a door **_Closed_** , there was no way I'd be able to make it through a school day carrying these in my head � and if it was going to take effort caching properties into spare objects I had lying around, that would mean limitations to what I could do.

Pushing _Closed_ into my desk drawer took a whisper of effort, like pouring out a handful of sand. I could see how I'd missed it with my bedroom door; the set of my thoughts and the little shove I'd given were lost in my fatigue and desire to sleep.

_TODO: Exercises to improve semantic incontinence._

* * *

For lack of anything better, I picked up the piece of paper I'd used during my second test and tried to push _Closed_ into it.

It went.

I stared at the piece of paper in my hand that was firmly, obstinately, _Closed._

"What the _fuck?"_ I whispered.


	4. Chapter 4

I went to bed with a headache and an upset stomach from the antibiotics.

At least, the nausea was from the antibiotics.

The headache had more to do with the fact that I'd been playing Magnetic Poetry with the building blocks of reality until Dad had shown up with a glass of water, a bottle of pills and another reminder that I wasn't going to school tomorrow.

With the lights out and the covers up and my spare copy of _Closed_ sitting in one of my textbooks on my desk, my thoughts turned to the journal I'd hidden in a box of old schoolwork.

Not the power-experimentation one that I hadn't started writing yet. That one... well, I hadn't _started_ writing that yet, and my power wasn't quite _that_ bullshit.

This was the journal I'd been compiling for almost a year, a ledger itemizing every little henpeck-atrocity the Three had performed.

And tomorrow, I was going to give it to a man with a badge and a gun and a state-sponsored justice subsidy.

I didn't feel as _vindictive_ as I thought I would, and it wasn't just the rational side of me saying _just because you can tell a cop how bad it was doesn't mean it's going to be all better_.

* * *

I dreamt I was dressed like a police officer, staring into a mirror at myself.

"She's got too much red in her ledger," my reflection said in a laconic drawl.

I looked down at my hands, battered and caked in _Filth-_

* * *

My oatmeal needed more sugar. _Bland_ and _Nutty_ were kind of diagnostic.

My stomach disagreed, but I told it that that was just the pills talking and I could get sugar into my bloodstream faster than I could potentially puke it up and that was better for _everyone_ , wasn't it?

Dad was trying to tempt me into eggs by dint of eating them in front of me. Ugh.

"...so the detective should be showing up a little after noon."

I looked up at him.

"...are you going into work?"

He shook his head.

"Dad-"

"No. I'm not going to leave you alone."

Our eyes met for a hair of a skosh of a tick before I looked back down at my oatmeal.

I hadn't seen him like this before.

Well, I had, but I hadn't been paying attention.

Neither of us had been paying much attention since Mom died.

* * *

The policeman came over about two hours after breakfast. He wasn't wearing a uniform, which surprised me at first.

"Mr. Hebert? Miss Hebert? I'm Detective Landau. We spoke on the phone?

Dad nodded, and we went into the living room.

"Can I get you anything?" I offered, the words stumbling out of my mouth. "Tea, water?"

The detective shook his head. "Nothing for me, thank you."

He turned to look at me, and I couldn't help but shiver a little at the cool compassion in his eyes. "Feel free to make something. Whatever makes you feel comfortable."

I escaped to the kitchen to boil some water as Dad struck up a conversation; something to do with unions, I guess?

I let the tea steep as I came out of the kitchen and sat down on the couch, next to Dad.

"Are you feeling up for talking?"

I nodded at the detective. "Ready as I'll ever be, I guess."

He nodded and looked down at his notepad.

"All right. Could you tell me about what happened yesterday?"

It didn't take me long to lay out what had happened; arriving at school, smelling the reek from my locker, opening it to see what they'd put inside...

"...a-and that's when they pushed me in." I swallowed around the catch in my throat. "And closed the door."

I didn't cry. I was perversely proud of that.

He didn't ask questions for a little while. I picked up my tea.

 _Tepid. Warm_. I grimaced and took a sip. It didn't help my throat.

"Did you see who pushed you into the locker?"

My cup started to shake until a hand caught mine.

I looked over at my dad, and the look in his eyes was like something I hadn't seen in years. My eyes blurred with tears.

"No." I managed to get out. "They were behind me."

I swallowed again.

"But I know who was involved."

* * *

I had to go to my room and get my journal first. I took a little time while I was up there to wipe the tears out of my eyes.

Dad and Detective Landau weren't talking; both pairs of eyes watching me as I descended and retook my seat. Dad took one of my hands, giving it a squeeze.

"It's three girls."

I took a breath.

"Their names are Sophia Hess, Madison Clements, and Emma Barnes-"

My voice broke a little as Dad's hand tightened almost painfully around mine.

"And they've been doing it for the last two years."

Dad's hand squeezed tighter. I thought of his face, how it darkened to an ugly flushed red whenever he really got mad.

Detective Landau's pen stilled.

"...two _years?_ Taylor... _"_

"Dad-"

"You could have told me, you could have said something-"

"Let _go_ -"

I finally jerked my hand free of his, massaging my sore fingers for a few seconds. When I finally looked up to see his face lined with impotent pity, I wished I hadn't.

"Here."

I put the notebook on the coffee table and pushed it over to the detective. He picked it up. Looked back at me.

"It's- a month or two. Of what they did."

He nodded.

"Thank you. This will help."

He smiled and I smiled back as I felt tears rise. Dad's hand found mine again, squeezing gently.

"I-I'm sorry," I managed, pulling my hand free of his grasp and standing up. "Just... not right now."

Detective Landau nodded, but I was already out of the living room.


	5. Chapter 5

I shoved my door closed behind me and pressed my back against it, eyes burning as tears rolled down my face.

It was all coming apart.

This secret, terrible thing that I'd kept under wraps for so long...

Dad knew.

Detective Landau knew.

And even though I knew, _knew_ that it was going to get back to the Three, and that they'd figure out some way to use it against me...

...telling someone, telling _Dad_ and having him listen?

Part of me said that wasn't worth anything.

I sniffled and told that part of myself to shut the hell up.

* * *

I sat there for a while, hands pressed against the carpet as I listened to soft whispers of _Springy_ and _Stain-Resistant_ as Dad showed Detective Landau out, then slowly climbed the stairs.

I knew he was going to knock at my door. I flinched anyways.

"S-Taylor?"

"Yeah." I coughed a little, getting the roughness out of my throat.

"Look, I'm..."

He paused for a second, then two.

"...I'm sorry, little owl."

I dug my nails into the carpet and tried to stop the tears from coming up again.

It didn't work.

"I know I haven't been there for you. For either of us. Not since..."

He trailed off. _Not since Mom,_ I thought.

There was silence for a little while.

"I'm going to fix this, honey. I promise. You're _not_ going back to that school."

I heard the floorboards creak as he turned away and slowly descended the stairs.

* * *

It finally clicked an hour or so later, when I'd taken back my _Closed_ and was idly trying it with some things I'd found in my room.

I touched Dad.

I touched Dad and _I didn't feel anything._

Did my power not work on people?

I pulled _Closed_ back to me as I thought.

Powers could be idiosyncratic, I knew that much from my teenager's worth of cape geekery... especially when it came to how they interacted with people.

It was worth investigating, but... I wasn't sure _how_. I wasn't sure what would happen if I put a property into someone � or worse, when I took one out.

I shivered, and promptly distracted myself by making a three-foot long pencil by way of taking the _Long_ out of a yardstick, which was pretty cool.

"Taylor?"

I jumped as I heard my dad yell up to me from downstairs, pulling _Long_ out of the pencil and opening my bedroom door.

"Dad?"

"Taylor, I need you to come down here, please."

There was an edge in his voice; worried, but also cautious.

"Dad-"

_"Now."_

I made my way down the stairs at speed. Dad was by the front door, looking over his shoulder at me. Behind him was-

Blue armor. Silver highlights that gleamed in the living room light.

I missed a step and had to grab the banister.

 _Armsmaster_ was in my _house_.

* * *

"No, she's not in trouble."

Dad had offered a seat and Armsmaster had just as politely offered not to destroy our furniture, so we ended up all standing by the front door.

"We try to keep our ear to the ground when it comes to people being up to no good. I heard about what had happened and thought I'd come by."

"A good-neighbor visit," Dad said. "You should've brought a casserole." He tried to smile, but it faded when Armsmaster's expression didn't change.

"Spenser." His visor turned in my direction. "My team... we've seen a lot of people do bad things. What happened wasn't your fault."

I swallowed around the sudden tightness in my throat. "You- you can't know that."

"We're people," Armsmaster said quietly. "We're good at blaming ourselves for things that aren't our fault."

I shook my head. Dad put his hand on my shoulder. Squeezed gently.

"I know it's hard to hear," the hero said. "But you were in a bad situation, and you survived, _and it's not your fault._ "

"Please." The voice was small, quiet, tight with emotion. I didn't recognize it as mine at first. "Please don't."

We were all quiet. I closed my eyes so I didn't have to see them watching me.

"I'm sorry," Armsmaster finally said. "Maybe this was too much. Too soon."

"It's. It's okay." It was easier to talk when I couldn't see him.

"Here." I was confused until I opened my eyes and saw he was holding out a small card to me. I took it, read it.

 _Armsmaster_ , it said, with a phone number underneath.

I turned it over. He had written on the back, in smooth, efficient lines and curves.

_Spenser._

_You_ are _strong._  
_Call me if you need to talk._

It was signed _Armsmaster._

I looked up at him.

"I mean it," he said. "I know it can be tough, and having someone to talk to can help."

I nodded, unsure what to say.

Armsmaster looked to my dad, then back to me.

"I should probably be going," he said.

My dad bobbed his head. "Thanks for stopping by."

I nodded again. Armsmaster nodded back at me, then opened the door and he was gone.

* * *

I stared up at the ceiling as I lay in my bed. _Closed_ was back in a book, the lights were out, and I couldn't sleep.

Armsmaster's card, his words, kept intruding.

_You're strong._

_You didn't deserve this._

My first thoughts had been that he was just saying something to make me feel better about myself, what had happened. Make-words to be kind.

_You didn't deserve this._

I'd thought I did for so long. That I'd finally _chosen_ to buckle down and just _let_ the bullying happen instead of doing some nebulous something, _anything_ to make it stop.

But... doing _anything_. There were dark thoughts there, actions that I don't think I could bear doing.

Maybe that was what Armsmaster had meant, when he said I was strong. That I was staying true to myself, even when the worst things happened to me.

I found a quiet part of me hoping that that was the case.

Then my door was shoved open and a figure came through, all in black and silver chainmail.

I stared at them. They had a badge on their vest and what looked like a gun in their hand.

"PRT, miss." Their voice was flat, electronic. "You need to come with me. _Now_."


	6. Interlude: Armsmaster

The evening update meeting had been going well. His team had discussed patrol results, new intel from the analysts, status updates on the Wards.

"How about you?" the olive-skinned woman asked, her flag bandanna pulled around her neck as she looked at me. "You made a detour for a crisis visit, right? The Hebert girl."

He nodded. "Spenser, yes. I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary in the time I spent there. She had what looked like a good relationship with her father, and seemed to be handling her situation well. I provided my number and an offer of support if she needed it."

Everyone was watching him. Silent. Unmoving. The hairs on the back of his neck.

"Uh, boss," Assault said, breaking the long silence. "Who's Spenser?"

"...the Hebert girl. Spenser Hebert."

"Armsmaster." Miss Militia frowned. "Her name's Taylor. Taylor Hebert."

"Her name is _Spenser,_ " he said with conviction. "That's her _name_."

"The file said-"

"Her name is _Spenser_!" He found himself surprised at the snap in his voice.

Everyone was staring their eyes showing surprise and shock and what he thought was sadness.

"That's her _name,_ " he said again. Hating how it suddenly sounded plaintive.

"Armsmaster." Director Piggot's face was closed, unreadable. "I have reason to believe you have been compromised. I'm ordering you to submit to Master-Stranger isolation and testing."

He opened his mouth. "I-"

"That's an order."

There was a pause, laden with tension.

Armsmaster finally nodded, rising to his feet and glancing over as Miss Militia rose as well, pulling her flag bandana over her nose and mouth.

"I'll go with him," she offered.

The Director nodded and the two of them left the meeting room, everyone's gaze a silent pressure on the back of his neck.


	7. Chapter 7

The troopers were silent for the whole ride; Shell-black, featureless helmets bore nothing but our reflections. The van had no windows, so I couldn't see where we were going.

Dad and I were quiet the whole way, too. I knew Dad was looking at me. Curious? Concerned? Confused? Maybe all three.

* * *

We walked the hallways of what I assumed was the PRT building, but we didn't see any other people. Maybe they'd all gone home?

The troopers led us to a room - bare concrete, with steel chairs and a table. Indicated we should go in, then shut the door behind us when we did.

Dad and I sat. The chair was _Cold._ Dad was wearing a bathrobe and I was mildly jealous.

"Taylor?"

I looked down at my hands. "Yeah?"

"Do you know why we're here?"

Yeah. I had a pretty good idea.

"Dad... do you remember calling me Spenser? How the nurse and the doctor were calling me that?"

He didn't say anything, and I looked over to see he was nodding.

"You got angry, back at the hospital. I was worried."

"Dad... that's not my name. I'm Taylor. But everyone I meet knows me as Spenser. Even if we've never met before. Even when they shouldn't know me as _anything_."

He was quiet for a little while.

"I can see that last part being... strange," he allowed. "But your name's Spenser, little owl. That's what we named you. Spenser Taylor Hebert."

I sighed. "I don't think that's what my birth certificate says, Dad."

Dad didn't push the issue, and we sat there in silence.

Time passed - I don't know how long, the room didn't have a clock and I was a mixture of tired and wired and more than a little scared.

Did something happen to Armsmaster? I thought of the card back in my room, how it was addressed to Spenser.

The PRT probably had access to my official records, so if everything about my life said I was Taylor, but Armsmaster said I was Spenser... yeah, I could see them getting worried about that.

There was a crackling sound and a woman's voice came from the ceiling.

"Hello? This is Miss Militia. I'm sorry about the wait."

My dad looked up. "Finally! Can you explain what's going on? You pulled my daughter and I out of bed, and she's sick and needs her rest!" He looked ready to go on a small rant, his face already starting to redden.

"We have reason to believe Taylor's a parahuman."

Dad stopped. Looked at me.

I stared at the table.

"Taylor, it looks like you have what's called a 'stranger' effect, which as far as we can tell causes people to think of you as 'Spenser'."

So they knew.

"When Armsmaster insisted on using that name rather than the one in your records, it raised some flags. Protocol required us to bring you in as quickly as possible to determine what was going on."

I breathed out. Pretty much what I had figured.

"Is there some way to turn it off?" Dad asked, looking up at the ceiling, then back at me when he realized who he should really be asking.

I shook my head. "I... I don't know. I want it to stop, but it doesn't."

"It's okay, Taylor," Miss Militia said. "We've managed to establish that your power doesn't work through video and digital filters, which is why I'm talking to you now over the intercom."

"...does that mean Taylor's...?" my dad finally asked, trailing off mid-question.

"We don't know. We'd like to examine you and Taylor, run some tests to better understand what's going on. I realize this isn't the best time, but we need to learn more before we make plans for what happens next."

I looked at my dad. "I guess it's okay?"

He looked back at me. Gave me a half-smile. "Do you think they'll let us go if we say no?"

* * *

Our escorts still wore those helmets and the hallways were still suspiciously empty.

The staff in the testing lab were also wearing helmets, presumably to shield them from the Spenser thing.

The adrenaline rush I'd been running on was fading, and the tests they did started to blur together. They put Dad in something that looked like a chair from a hair salon, albeit one that looked like the bastard offspring of that TRON movie and the Baroque period, squirted gel in my hair and attached electrodes, shoved us in extremely noisy donuts after wanding us with a metal detector...

They finally finished. Dad and I were sitting in some marginally more comfortable chairs, and they'd given me a PRT sweatshirt after I'd mentioned being cold. I leaned against Dad, he put an arm around me, and I closed my eyes.

"Mr. Hebert?"

I felt Dad look up when she spoke. "Yes?"

"It looks like your daughter's power works without changing either your neural structure or function, which is damn- excuse me, _darn_ strange for a Stranger power, especially given how it seems to have a persistent, ongoing effect."

"So... Taylor's... power doesn't hurt people? I'm fine?" Danny asked.

"The results from you and Armsmaster seem to indicate that, yes."

Dad's arm tightened around me in a hug.

There was a chiming sound.

"Sorry, it looks like your daughter's imaging results are coming in..."

There was a long silence.

Then people started to murmur.

I opened my eyes.

Almost everyone in the testing lab was clustered around the woman in charge, passing around a tablet and talking animatedly with each other.

I felt Dad stiffen.

"What is it? What's wrong?"

"You'd better see for yourself." She grabbed her tablet, handed it over to Dad and I.

It was showing one of those cross-sections of my head, with the foldy brain and hollow black eyeball... and a bright white mass in the middle of my grey matter.

I looked at it, and I knew what it was without any explanation from anyone.

Polenta.


	8. Chapter 8

The research staff were very interested in scanning the rest of me after that revelation.

I ended up falling asleep in the MRI, despite the noise. Dad woke me up when they'd finished.

"Anything happen while I was out?" I asked.

Dad shook his head. "They wanted to know how I could call you Taylor."

I looked up at him. "Yeah?"

He smiled wryly. "Told them it was important to you."

* * *

They wanted to do more testing and have me try to use my power, see if I could change 'Spenser' to something else.

The arrival of the black-clad troopers put a stop to that.

We went down some more still-empty hallways, finally ending up in a conference room with a big table and much-used swivel chairs.

And Armsmaster. And a guy in a suit, with folder full of papers in front of him.

"Miss Hebert? Mr. Hebert?" the man asked. "I'm Deputy Director Renick, and you've already met Armsmaster."

He gestured. "Please, sit."

We ended up taking the chairs opposite them.

 _Rolling,_ mine said. _Pneumatic_.

"First off," Renick said, "I want to apologize to the two of you for the... abruptness of your visit. After we found out Armsmaster was affected, protocol requires us to try and contain things before too many people could be put at risk."

Dad sighed. "Your officers pulled us out of our house, out of _bed._ My daughter is sick, and _none of this is helping her._ "

"Please," he continued. "Just... is Taylor in trouble? Are you holding us here, or can we go now?"

We stared at each other across the table.

"Actually," Armsmaster said, "we'd like Ssss...Taylor to consider joining the Wards, at least in a limited role."

Dad and I stared at him.

_The Wards? But they- they only know about the Spenser thing!_

"I'm sorry, what?" My dad glared across the table at Armsmaster. "Wards get into _fights_ , and all Taylor does is... her power means people think her name is _Spenser_! I want my daughter to be _safe_."

"Taylor is a parahuman," Armsmaster shot back. "With a power whose only purpose seems to out her as such. Joining the Wards gives us the chance to put her under the protection of the PRT."

"Additionally, we wouldn't be making Miss Hebert an official Ward, at least not publicly," the Deputy Director said. "At the moment, we have no way of keeping her identity safe, and she doesn't appear to have any ability to control her power - which is what the Wards program is all about. Learning about her power and how to use it _safely_."

"...how would that work?" my dad finally asked. "Being a Ward, but not officially?"

Renick picked up the folder in front of him, opened it.

"For internal purposes, Miss Hebert would be a Ward. She would have access to PRT facilities like a normal Ward does, and would draw pay in the same manner."

He took a breath, then read on.

"For external purposes, she would not be a Ward. She would not be publicly presented as one, nor would she engage in patrols or PR events."

He reversed the folder and slid it across the table to Dad, who started reading.

"Why are you doing this?" my dad finally asked.

"What do we get out of it, you mean?" The Deputy Director smiled gently.

"We're the PRT, Mr. Hebert. Our job is to keep people _safe_."

"Also..." Armsmaster, said, then paused for a moment. " _Taylor_ has a mass in her brain that gave her powers _and_ appears to be made of corn porridge. Understanding how and why this happened could give us a better idea of what happened, how her powers work, and potentially a way to deactivate them and give her a normal life."

Dad nodded slowly, never looking up from his review of the papers.

"Would I have to spend time with the other Wards?" I asked.

The Deputy Director looked puzzled. "You'd have access to the Ward common area, same as the other Wards."

"You're saying you don't want to interact with your peers," Armsmaster said.

"It-" I faltered. "No, it's just. I don't want to deal with... teenage stuff? Popularity, being excluded or part of the 'in' group or..."

"Politics." Dad said.

I made a face and nodded.

Armsmaster mirrored my nod, his visor glinting in the light.

"What about school?" my dad asked, looking over at me.

I looked at the Deputy Director. "Would I get to go to Arcadia? Or does that count as one of those 'external' things?"

"We can definitely see about getting you into Arcadia." Renick said. "But we would want to take steps to make your power less... visible to people in your daily life."

"You would have to be Spenser, rather than Taylor," Armsmaster added.

"You mean... actually change my name."

Both men nodded.

"It's the simplest way to hide the discrepancy," Armsmaster said. "Testing seems to indicate that your Stranger ability to cause people to 'know' you as Spenser doesn't cause any cognitive dissonance on its own."

"We can fast-track the paperwork," the Deputy Director said. "It's no trouble."

I looked at my dad. He looked back at me.

"I know your name is important to you, honey," he said. "But I want you to be safe."

"I don't have any other options, I guess."

"There is an alternative." That was Armsmaster. "There are distance-learning and tele-educational programs for Wards and Protectorate members whose powers make it difficult to lead a normal life. Usually that's Case 53s, but your power means you'd probably be a good fit."

I looked over at Dad hopefully.

He didn't look too happy.

"That sounds a lot like isolating yourself."

"Dad... I've already been isolating myself. I've been isolating myself for _over a year_."

I swallowed. "Just. I want some time on my own. Where I don't have to worry about anything or anyone."

Dad hesitated.

"If that's what you want, I guess that'd be okay, at least for now," he said. "But I don't want you to forget about Arcadia. Maybe give it six months or so?"

_Yes!_

I breathed out a rush of air, a smile starting to form as I nodded. "Yes. That. The distance-learning thing. Please."

The Deputy Director smiled and pulled out a pen.

It was _Round_ and _Engraved_ in my hand as I signed the Ward paperwork.


	9. Chapter 9

The Deputy Director seemed pretty cheerful as he handed off the folder of signed papers to someone in a shirt and tie.

"There are on-site living quarters for visiting heroes - we'd like you and your father to stay overnight. That should give us enough time to get a security plan in place for your house."

I looked over at Dad. He looked tired, especially since everything had been settled.

"I guess that makes sense. Honey, was 'PRT Sleepover' on your bucket list?"

I snickered.

"We'll see about getting you some clothes in the morning," the Deputy Director said. "For now? Welcome to the Wards, young lady."

He extended a hand to me. I shook it.

The little voice of my power was silent.

* * *

I laid in my guest bed, unable to sleep.

 _Musty_ , the sheets said.

I was a W _ard_ now. A hero.

Technically.

I was out of Winslow. Free of the Three. Free of the _hole_ that had been my life.

And I had _powers_. Ones I was still learning to use.

Ones that the PRT didn't know about.

Then again, they'd never asked. And I'd never been in a position to just tell them; I was still a little numb from everything that had happened today.

 _I should tell them tomorrow,_ part of me thought.

I didn't feel good about that, though. If they knew I could do things besides the Spenser thing, that I had real powers...

...they'd make me a real Ward.

I'd have to spend time with them. Patrols, PR, training.

Socializing.

I didn't want that. Especially since the PRT had given me the option of not going to school with other kids _at all_.

 _But they're the good guys,_ that same part of me thought. _Who lies to the good guys?_

 _I'll tell them if they ask,_ I decided.

I took my pillow out from under my head, gave it a good shake to make it _Fluffy_ , and relaxed back, ready to sleep the sleep of the just.

* * *

There was someone knocking at my door.

"Nnnn."

More knocking. And my pillow was wrong. Because it wasn't my pillow.

I sat up. Looked around the room that wasn't mine.

Remembered. Armsmaster, The PRT at our house.

The knock came again, a little more insistent.

I worked my mouth for a moment, trying to get the sleepy thickness out of my tongue. "Yes? Hello?"

"Miss Hebert?" a woman's voice called out. "I have some clothes for you."

Oh.

"Uh. Um, I'm not up yet..."

"I can just leave them inside the door, if that's all right with you."

I pulled the sheets closer. "Uh, that'd be okay, thanks."

The door opened just a hair, and a feminine hand put a pile of clothes on the floor before closing the door again.

I heard her knock on Dad's door and repeat the process.

_Well, no sense in going back to bed now._

* * *

Dad looked like he was modeling the entire clothing section of the PRT giftshop.

Then again, so was I.

"How come you got the Armsmaster shirt?" I asked, plucking at my Velocity-themed top with racing stripes.

Dad grinned. "Want to switch? I totally rocked the muscle tee back in college - want to see if your old man still has what it-"

"Dad!"

I didn't mention that my pile of clothes had had a set of the old Armsmaster-themed underwear, still in the original packaging.

Or as Greg would have enthusiastically put it, 'mint condition.'

"Mr. Hebert? ...Miss Hebert?"

We both turned to the figure walking down the hallway towards us.

She was dressed for the office - white button-up shirt, dark slacks... dark hair crested into... I think it was called a fauxhawk?

"Hey!" She shook hands with my dad. "Lena Clark. Glad to see you're dressed. Clothes okay?"

"Do you have anything Armsmaster in Taylor's size?"

" _Dad._ I'm okay- really, this is good. Thank you."

She grinned at me. "You two want to hit the cafeteria before we drive you home?"

Dad self-consciously rubbed his eyes. "I could do with a cup of coffee. You do have coffee, right?"

Lena grinned. "Too thick to drink, too thin to plow?"

Dad sighed. "Then yes, I could go for a cup. None for Taylor, though. It'll stunt her growth."

"Oh my god, Dad." I lightly kicked him in the shin.

He just smiled back at me... and I realized I hadn't seen him smile, or _joke_ with me, in a long, long time.

"C'mon," he said. "Let's see how bad the cafeteria eggs are."


	10. Chapter 10

The eggs were pretty decent, considering that they'd been scrambled and left in a warming tray.

Bacon was a lost cause, though. I went with sausages.

"Soooo..." Lena said as she joined us with a cup of coffee. "Before you two head out, we do need to schedule Taylor for some additional onboarding. ID, the distance-learning setup... tour of the PRT, that sort of thing."

Dad's mouth was full of coffee, so I eventually spoke up. "It's okay. We - I could do tomorrow?"

Dad put his coffee down. "Tomorrow sounds all right. Would I need to be there? Sign anything else?"

Lena hummed quietly. "I don't think there's anything critical? Worst case, Spenser- sorry, Taylor can just bring it home to sign and bring back later."

I bit my lip as Dad nodded, looking at her from across the table.

"So... how did you get roped into running herd on Taylor and I?"

"Oh, geez. I work in the PR department? I'm just the low-girl on the org-chart, so I get a lot of task diversity." She smiled at him.

I shifted in my seat, suddenly uncomfortable.

"How are we getting home?" I asked quietly.

Lena checked her phone. "We finish up here, I take you to the parking garage, we meet the officer in charge of your security detail and they drive you home."

I looked at Dad. He looked at me.

My stomach gurgled.

I sighed, and went to finish my eggs.

* * *

We took one of the smoothest elevators I'd ever ridden down to the parking garage.

"Tinkertech," Lena explained cheerfully, and I started to wonder if there was _anything_ she wasn't cheerful about.

The parking garage smelled of oil and exhaust; true to her word, there was a completely ordinary car parked by the elevator, with a completely ordinary man seated inside.

He looked up from his phone as we stepped out of the elevator; Lena waved at him, and he opened his car door and got out, coming around the car to meet us.

"Sergeant Thorne."

He smiled slightly. "Just call me Eddie. And you'd be... Danny and Spenser, right?"

"Taylor," I said. "...I'm Taylor."

He winced slightly, brushing a hand over spiky dark hair. "Sorry. That's a hell of a thing." He extended a hand, and we shared a cautious handshake.

Dad shook his hand with a little more enthusiasm. "Thanks for giving us a ride home."

"It's the least we could do after last night." He opened the passenger door. "Get in. We can talk on the way."

We waved goodbye to Lena, got in the car, and headed for home.

* * *

We talked during the drive back; it turned out Sergeant Thorne was in charge of security for _all_ the Wards, and from there the conversation turned to security at home.

"No, we don't have a security system," Dad said. "We've... we've honestly never been able to afford it."

Thorne grunted, but kept his eyes on the road as he spoke. "We're going to be installing one. It'll be through a front company, so your neighbors won't be seeing anything out of the ordinary."

He pulled a business card out of his pocket, handed it to Dad.

"They should be calling later today or tomorrow."

* * *

Dad lowered his hand as the car drove away, and followed me inside.

I heard him close the front door, and then all the breath whooshed out of me as he folded me into a big hug.

"Dad-" I wheezed, and he relaxed enough to let me draw in a breath.

"Sorry, I just- I've been worried for you, little owl."

I leaned into the hug, slowly breathing out. "I don't know what I was expecting... but it wasn't this."

He gave me another squeeze. "I need to call the office and let them know I won't be coming in."

I nodded into his shoulder and he let me go. "I'll be up in my room?"

"Okay, honey. That sounds good."

* * *

My head spun as I sat on my bed with an open notebook and a pile of tchotchkes and assorted junk.

My power was starting to remind me of something called _object-oriented programming_ , which we weren't going to learn about in computer class until next year.

I'd read ahead.

The big idea behind object-oriented code was the idea of code that represented... well, objects, and the properties those objects had.

You could have a chunk of code that held information about a rectangle, where the properties inside that code described things like _Height_ and _Width_ and _Location_.

Normally, these properties were hidden inside the object, only able to be modified by functions that validated input so you didn't have a rectangle where the _Height_ was, say, a negative number.

But my power seemed like it was able to subvert that, directly altering the properties of, say, a door or a book without having to do something like physically open or close it.

 _I'm the best goddamn locksmith in the city,_ I thought giddily, picking up a pencil and making it as _Flexible_ as a piece of cloth, then curling it in a spiral around my finger and taking the _Flexible_ out to freeze it that way.

* * *

"I was thinking," my dad said as we ate lunch. "I know, how horrible."

I snorted. "About what?"

He looked at me over his sandwich.

"How about we call in a pizza and have a movie night?"

I hesitated. Swallowed, with an effort.

"...why? I mean... we haven't done anything like that-"

"Since your Mom passed." He nodded, slumping a little. "I... I haven't been around for you. And with everything that's happened... I just... feel like being there for you is something that needs to be... more _there_ , I guess. I'm your father, I should be doing more."

"Dad..." I swallowed again, feeling tears sting my eyes.

He took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes. "I know. You're a teenager, and it's not cool to hang out with your old man. I just. It just. Seemed like it might be a good place to start."

I couldn't help but smile. "Dad?"

He looked over at me, smiling a little.

"I'd like that."

* * *

I lay in bed, looking up at the sky through my window.

As sleep claimed me, I couldn't help but feel like my life was turning around.


	11. Chapter 11

"I just wanted to apologize for yesterday."

I looked blankly at Lena as we walked down the hallway.

"For?"

She didn't look back at me, and I watched as a faint rush of pink rose to her cheeks.

"I called you Spenser? I didn't realize I had until Sergeant Thorne did the same thing, and..."

"Oh." I thought for a moment. "Yeah. That. Right."

Lena glanced over at me and I looked down at my feet.

"It's okay. Really."

"Okay." She didn't sound convinced.

* * *

"Miss Hebert!" Deputy Director Renick said with a smile as he came around his desk. "Good to see you again."

I tried to smile back at him as we shook hands - I was still having to get used to the silence that came with actually _touching_ people.

"Does my dad need to be here? For signing anything, I mean?"

Renick shook his head. "The papers you and your father signed the other night were enough for us to get the ball moving. In fact, as of today, you no longer attend Winslow High."

I stared. I couldn't help it. "Already?"

He nodded. "Already. In fact-" He reached behind his desk, pulling up an Armsmaster messenger bag festooned with pockets "-you're set to begin your distance-learning program, as of now."

He reached in the bag and pulled out a tablet computer.

"PRT educational issue. Video lectures, textbooks, assignments, all through one device. Some of the tests and exams require a proctor; you'll have to come back here for those."

The tablet went back in the bag; he reached into a smaller pocket, pulled out a flip-phone.

"You're not a Ward, but we felt it was important you get a phone. Gives us a easy contact point, and some additional security."

He opened the phone, showing me the keypad with a large red button.

"Press once, it connects you to dispatch. Press and hold, rapid-response panic alarm- are you all right?"

I nodded, then regretted it as the room started to spin around me. I closed my eyes. It didn't help.

"Sit, sit." He guided me back into one of the chairs in front of his desk.

"'M sorry," I mumbled.

"Spen- it's alright."

I sat there, just breathing until the room went still around me.

"Here."

I opened my eyes to see the Deputy Director holding a paper cup of water out to me. I took it, sipped. It helped.

"Too much?" Renick asked.

I carefully shook my head. "No, I... okay, yeah. It's... I just never expected... any of this? It doesn't feel real."

He smiled carefully. "Taylor. You're with us now. We take care of our own."

* * *

'Taking care of their own' apparently meant more labs and testing.

More... _invasive_ testing.

I stared at the beaker of liquid in front of me, glowing blue and glistening with moire patterns.

"...I have to drink this."

"It's contrast media," Doctor Ellis said. "It'll give us better definition on your imaging results."

"And this is safe?"

"Oh, for sure. Maybe some mild side effects, but it's totally harmless. Here."

They picked up the beaker, took a swig. Smiled at me with sparkling-blue teeth.

"See? Totally fine."

Their research assistant spoke up. "You do realize that's tinker-made, right? Four hundred dollars per deciliter."

"Ah, but fostering trust in your research subjects is priceless!"

I took the beaker from them. Drank.

...it tasted like hot plastic and bubble gum.

* * *

They passed me through every piece of donut-shaped tinkertech in the lab, and one or two others that Armsmaster had brought in partway through.

Everyone was very surprised when Doctor Ellis' assistant found out my imaging results _tasted_ like polenta when licked.

* * *

"Metonym."

I looked at Doctor Ellis blankly.

"We needed a name for the database."

"...like a cape name?"

They smiled, their grin still blue. "Exactly!"

* * *

"Do you know who this is?"

The volunteer peered at me - well, my distorted reflection through the funhouse mirror they'd brought in. "...Spenser?"

Doctor Ellis frowned, wrote something on their tablet. "Get the other mirrors out, we need to test double reflections."

* * *

I sighed and put my head in the photocopier. Closed my eyes.

"Ready," I said.

The assistant hit the copy button and everything was bright.

* * *

It was dark under the blanket.

"...I don't know?" the volunteer said.

"Interesting!" Doctor Ellis exclaimed. "Full coverage inhibits the Stranger effect."

* * *

My eyes were closed so tight it hurt.

 _Taylor_ , I thought. _I'm Taylor._

"Oh yeah! Spenser!"

I swore under my breath.

* * *

"In summary? Your power is... interesting. Very atypical."

I couldn't stop being Spenser. And the only way to hide it was to completely cover myself, Invisible Man-style.

Doctor Ellis was _pretty_ sure the tumor-slash-source-of-my-powers _wasn't_ actually polenta; they couldn't say what it was without a biopsy, which I didn't think Dad would authorize.

"This is actually very novel; I don't think we've ever seen a _negative_ Stranger rating before."


	12. Interlude: Redirection

"Director."

"Armsmaster."

"We may have a problem. The Hebert girl, Spenser. Taylor."

"Explain."

"Sophia Hess was likely involved in her trigger event."

"You mean-"

"As an active participant, yes."

"Christ. You're sure?"

"I pulled data and text logs from her phone that corroborate Miss Hebert's statement to the police, as well as to a journal she kept of the... abuse she experienced."

"You're bringing Hess in. That goes without saying."

"As soon as we're done here. We need to get her handler, too - there had to have been some red flags during all this, and I would like to know how she missed them."

"Go get Hess. I'll have a squad bring in her handler- and I need to talk to Barry, because he's been taking point with the Heberts."

* * *

"Jesus, Emily. How the hell did we screw the pooch on this one so badly?"

"Shadow Stalker's handler was being paid off by the school to look the other way. Sounds like the principal didn't want to lose her pet Ward."

"Internal Affair's already in the middle of their quarterly security review. They're not going to appreciate having to audit the _Wards_ -"

"Let me handle IA, Barry. Your focus needs to be the Hebert girl and her father."

"Her- they don't know."

"They don't. And I need this handled in a way that minimizes fallout; we're down a Ward now that Shadow Stalker decided to violate her probation, and we can't afford to show weakness. Talk with Legal and PR, see what you can do."

* * *

"Armsmaster."

"Director. Deputy Director."

"Barry? What do you have?"

"Two options. One, we bury this. Shadow Stalker is gone as of the end of the week, and the link to her civilian ID is already secured. The only real chance of a leak would be from the other Wards-"

"And Miss Hebert has already expressed a desire to distance herself from them."

"Exactly."

"...what's the alternative?"

"We tell them the truth. Sit them down, have them sign an NDA, lay things out."

"They're going to want to take action."

"They signed a Wards contract, albeit a modified one. Legal says the internal-arbitration clauses still apply."

"That's still a settlement, at the very least."

"But it's _in-house_. Minimizes the chances of the press finding out and running with it."

"Cooperation is a factor as well. We'd be preserving public standing at the cost of losing goodwill with S-Taylor and her father."

"Initial testing results have her pinned as a Stranger _minus one_. She's dependent on us-"

"Armsmaster, enough. I've made my decision."

"Director?"

"...we bury it, for now. Give the girl a few months to settle in. If we have to tell them in the future... well, we'll deal with that when it comes to it."


	13. Chapter 13

"...and so we define 'congruent' as 'equivalent regardless of orientation'; line segments are congruent if they are of the same length, angles are congruent if they measure the same number of degrees, and-"

The door to the office opened and Dad poked his head through the gap. "Taylor?"

I fumbled to pause the video, looking up at him as I shoved a headphone off one ear. "Dad?"

He smiled sheepishly. "Just... you know, checking in. Making sure you're okay and all that."

"Dad." I stared at him. "I'm _fine_ , just like I was fifteen minutes ago. Go- I don't know, go supervise one of your dockworkers or something."

He laughed a little. "Okay, okay..." he said, withdrawing and closing the door behind him.

I looked back at the laptop the PRT had provided, smiling a little to myself.

Dad had up-and-out refused to allow me to take classes from home; partly because he'd said that it was 'important' to have separate spaces for study and relaxation, partly because the office internet was better than what we had at home.

Given the number of times he'd 'popped in' to check on me, I was pretty sure a big part of it was that he wanted me around so he could make sure I was 'safe', for whatever that meant.

Dad aside, things were... well, things were pretty great.

School was _awesome_ ; the PRT program had better teachers than Winslow (which, admittedly, wasn't saying much), classwork I could take at my own pace and review at my leisure-

There was a soft chime from my laptop, announcing a new email.

> From: Weld  
>  To: Metonym  
>  Subject: Re: the angles are all wrong
> 
> I think the easiest way to solve is to work backwards.
> 
> The problem says "...such that the triangle GBD is equilateral." In order for it to be equilateral, all of the interior angles of the triangle have to be 60 degrees.
> 
> Since the triangles GBD and EBC overlap the way they do, the angles GBC and EBC are both 60 degrees.
> 
> You can use that, plus the hint that FC and GD are parallel, to solve the rest using what you know about vertical and supplementary angles.

And I had friends.

Well, a friend.

Okay, so maybe he'd just sent an email welcoming me to the distance learning program and to let him know if I had any questions.

So _maybe_ I was leveraging that by asking for some help on my math homework.

And it's not like he was a _dick_ or anything like everyone at Winslow.

It was... weirdly nice, being able to talk to someone.

Someone I wasn't really connected to.

Someone I could just walk away from, whether I turned off the laptop or just consigned all his emails to the spambox.

Another mail notification popped up.

> From: Weld  
>  To: Metonym  
>  Subject: Re: the angles are all wrong
> 
> By the way: one of my classmates is having some trouble with a book report. I could send it your way for a look-over if you want to quid some pro quo? ;)

I read the email. Re-read it.

I could say no. Not even a flat-out 'no': just tell Weld that I was too busy trying to catch up on all the classes I'd missed.

It wasn't like I'd made a _commitment_ or anything.

I started typing.

> From: Metonym  
>  To: Weld  
>  Subject: Re: Re: the angles are all wrong
> 
> What the heck, sure. That's assuming I know the book.
> 
> (We also need to talk about your usage of idiom.)

It wouldn't hurt to _look_ , right? I could still walk away, whenever I wanted. Just tell them 'sorry, I don't think I can help with this.'

My laptop chimed again.

> From: Weld  
>  To: Metonym  
>  Subject: Re: Re: Re: the angles are all wrong
> 
> That's good to hear. I'll tell Hunch to shoot you an email with the details. Thanks for taking a look.
> 
> (My usage of idiom is enthusiasmically cromulent, BTW)

I stared at the screen, then started typing very quickly.

> From: Metonym  
>  To: Weld  
>  Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: the angles are all wrong
> 
> One of those isn't even a word! And the other one is an Earth- _Aleph_ word! That's even _worse!_

The mail notification went off five minutes later, right as I finished writing that angle FAC was thirty degrees.

> From: Weld  
>  To: Metonym  
>  Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: the angles are all wrong
> 
> ;)


	14. Chapter 14

Doctor Braden beamed at me as I entered the research lab. "Sp- ah, Metonym! Glad you could make it. Today, we're going to be investigating possible propagation avenues for your Stranger effect."

I uncomfortably shifted from foot to foot. "...so, no more testing about blocking my power?"

"Not at the moment, no. Your power is remarkably persistent, for such a minor effect; I have some requisitions pending for parahuman materials and technological assistance, but I'm afraid you're not much of a priority at this point."

I try to make a face, look disappointed, but my heart isn't really in it. Finding a fix for my 'power' just meant a reason to 'integrate' me back into normal teenage life by sending me to Arcadia.

"Don't worry, we'll get your issue solved. Did you bring the material I requested, Spen- Metonym?"

I shrugged off my backpack, opened it, started pulling clothes out. "Yeah. So, uh. 'Possible propagation avenues', huh?"

"Yes! We've already established that your Stranger effect asserts itself via a perceptual route; the focus of our investigation today is seeing how closely that assertion is tied to _you._ "

We stare at each other for a moment; I'm pretty sure he just tried to explain something to me twice, using the same words in a different order.

"Maria?" Doc Braden looks over my shoulder. "Ah, good. Get Spensersorry, get her clothes ready while I finish setting things up?

Maria was Dr. Braden's... research assistant? Grad student? One of those.

"M-dash!" She smiled at me, teeth white against her olive complexion. She'd given me the nickname after finding out I enjoyed reading and English-related topics.

That, and being late to my lab appointment twice in a row.

I found myself grinning back at her. "Hey." I held out the clothes. "For you."

She snorted, taking them and looking them over. "Not my size, but I'll see what I can do. We shouldn't be needing you personally for the first bit of this, so, uh, wait in there-" She nodded at a hospital-style curtained alcove on one wall. "-and I'll come get you when we need you." She hesitated. "Did you bring something to read?"

I shrugged, patted my bag. "Homework."

" _Nice_. See you in a bit."

The alcove had a bed and a chair; I settled into the latter, pulled out my laptop, and got started on my World History assignment.

Dr. Braden's 'research' seemed to consist of bringing people in and... asking them questions about my clothes? Like, really obvious ones. Questions like "What are these? What are they made of? Who made them?"

I had mostly tuned them out in favor of several paragraphs on Herzegovina in the eighteen-hundreds when something caught my ear.

"Who does this belong to?"

"...it's... Spenser's?"

Dr. Braden got _very_ interested at that point, bringing in a _bunch_ of people _including Gallant_ to peruse my wardrobe and tell him who it belonged to.

* * *

I was finally alone in the house - dad went to get groceries. He wanted me to come with him, but I said I didn't want to go out.

He almost made me join him, I could see it in his face. Something about 'getting out of the house' and 'seeing people won't hurt you'.

I'd have to figure out some way to deal with that. For now... science.

I stood by the sink, filled a glass from the tap until it said _Full_.

I poured it into a measuring cup, checked the scale. Three-hundred and fifty milliliters.

Poured it back into the glass, shaking droplets from the measuring cup into the glass until it says _Full_ again.

And then I pulled that _Full_ into myself, watching as the water in the glass vanished, leaving it dry as a bone.

I took a deep breath.

And then I reached over to an empty mixing bowl on the counter by the sink, pushing _Full_ into it and watching as there's suddenly water in the bowl, filling it to brimming.

_Okay. Moment of truth._

I took the bowl in both hands, carefully picking it up so it didn't spill... and begin to pour from the bowl into the measuring cup.

Water splashed, formed a level, started to rise. One hundred. Two hundred.

Then three, then four, then _five_ before the still- _Full_ bowl wobbled in my hands, water surging to fill the measuring cup until it ran over and splashed in the sink-

I hurriedly set the bowl down on the counter, hands trembling a little as I stared at the measuring cup, full to brimming.


	15. Chapter 15

I stared at the full measuring cup. Looked over at the (still-full) bowl, then back at the cup.

_Fuck. I think I just became the most valuable person in Brockton Bay._

I mean, if I could do this with water... I could do it with gasoline. With high-quality booze. Drugs administered via injection.

First things first, though.

I picked up the measuring cup. Started pouring into the glass I'd taken _Full_ from.

I kept pouring until the measuring cup was empty, and the glass wasn't full.

To clarify: I had just poured a liter of water into a three-hundred-and-fifty milliliter glass.

_Well, in for a penny..._

I picked up the bowl, listened to it sing _Full_ at me before I began to pour it into the glass.

It took maybe a minute-thirty before my arms started to shake and I had to stop.

And the glass _still_ wasn't full.

 _Great. So I have a Bowl of Endless Water and a Glass of Holding_.

I realized I was giggling, the sound of it thready and slightly unhinged until I made myself stop.

The glass was heavier than I expected; I had to dry my hands off to get a better grip, and even then I had to exert myself to tip the thing over far enough to start emptying it.

_Note to self: Taking away 'full' provides more capacity, but the contents still weigh the same. Basically, not a Glass of Holding._

* * *

I stumbled into the PRT research lab, panting for breath. Doctor Braden turned to me, smiling widely. "Spenser! I'm glad to see you made it here so quickly."

I forced a smile onto my face. "Well, uh. You said it was urgent?"

He opened his mouth to start saying something.

"Oh!" I pulled my backpack around so I could open it and pull out my hairbrush. "I know I went off on you about the whole cutting-hair-for-a-sample thing, so I brought in my hairbrush? It's got hair on it."

Dr. Braden's smile had dwindled somewhat. "Marla!" he called, and his assistant Maria came in. "Spenser brought a hair sample- make sure it gets stored and filed for later review?"

Maria sighed, came over, took the hairbrush from me. Her smile didn't reach her eyes.

"...so, um. What's the emergency?" I finally asked as I watched Maria disappear into the next room."

"Not an emergency, but an opportunity! You see, Panacea happened to be in the building, and she's offered to assist us in gaining some samples..."

I looked over my shoulder and froze. Panacea was _there_ , sitting hunched in a chair and doing something on her phone.

Panacea was _here._

Panacea was here to _help me._

She glanced up from her phone at me, blinked, then looked back down at her phone.

Dr. Braden, unmindful of my sudden moment of hero worship, had continued. "...and so we're going to be doing a punch-biopsy on your upper arm."

 _What_.

I spun around to look at him. "A biop- you're going to _cut_ a _chunk_ out of my arm?!"

Dr. Braden smiled more cheerfully than anyone should when they're asked that question. "Yep! And then Panacea's going to heal it all up, so it qualifies as a non-invasive procedure!"

"W-what?" I started shaking my head, took a step back. "No, I never agreed to- my _dad_ never agreed to this."

The doctor's smile froze. "Now, Spenser... Panacea is taking time out of her busy schedule to help us with this - who knows when we'll get another chance? Don't you want to learn how your power works? Maybe find a way to counter it so you can live a _normal_ life?"

I glanced back over at Panacea, who had started watching us in lieu of doing stuff on her phone. An idea occurred to me, and I pointed at her as I looked back at the doctor.

"Does she even _know?!_ Does she?"

Panacea looked at me, clearly irritated. "...do I know _what_?"

"Part of my brain is corn pudding."

"What." She looks at me, "No, that's ridiculous. Here-" She reached out for my hand.

* * *

"You- your brain-"

"Yeah."

"-is polenta."

"Yeah."

"You have a _corona polenta_."

I sighed. "Yep. That's me, ol' pudding-brain."

"Spenser, _what the fuck_."

I let my head fall back and stared up at the acoustic-tiled ceiling.

"You know? I ask myself that a _lot_."

* * *

Panacea refused to touch me again. Something about her tone of voice said _ever_.

I smiled at Doctor Braden, and it didn't touch my eyes. "Gee, isn't it great that we found out Panacea won't heal me _before_ you dropped a borehole in my bicep?"


	16. Interstice: Two, Sir; One!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a Coil interstice. It involves graphic violence, corn-related body horror, and Coil being a synecdouche.
> 
> It is also completely optional.

He was smiling when his Tattletale came in.

He knew she couldn't see him smile - not through his mask, nor his suit.

She couldn't see, and still she _knew_ , knew about his smiles and the pistol on his lap, lying in wait under the desk.

"Tattletale."

"Coil." She was smiling, friendly and cold and brittle, warm flesh molded into the shape pleasantries required and their relationship demanded.

There would be a time in the very near future when he would have the opportunity to break that mold.

"You have a report for me." Not a question; he looked in her eyes, and they both knew that they were past questions. He provided a statement of fact, she supplied additional data...

...and then he would begin to offer _incentives_.

"Yeah. The Ward-who-isn't-a-Ward." She leaned forward a little, slid a file folder onto the top of his desk. "All the details are in there."

He smiled again and watched her flinch.

"Summarize for me. Please."

She breathed out, a nervous little _heh_. "So, she's got a negative Stranger rating-"

Down where she couldn't see, he lazily let his gloved fingers spider-walk over the grip of his pistol and watched her eyes widen behind her mask.

"-n-no, really, it's in the file, she's a Stranger _minus-one_ , the PRT found out when Armsmaster had to go into containment after a crisis visit!"

"She's not a threat."

"She makes you think her name's _Spenser!_ That's- it's all right in the file, okay?"

He looked down at the file. Then back up at her, how she hovered on the knife-edge between indignation and quivering fear.

For now.

"You verified this in-person."

Tattletale went completely still, her gaze fixed on his.

"Tattletale?"

He watched as a muscle in her cheek began to jerk in quick, clockwork spasms, slowly ratcheting into a horribly one-sided, vulpine grin that left the other half of her face untouched.

"Spenser." The word was barely a breath on her lips, but he heard it as though she was whispering into his ear. "I went. And I saw. _Spenser._ "

His palm met pistol's grip, fingers wrapping around until he could feel the stippling through the gloves of his costume.

"I-" She froze, tongue clicking in her mouth for a bare moment before resuming. "I _saw Spenser."_

Her body tensed, _flexed_ , as though all her muscles were battling each other- and under her skin, something _changed_ , tissue and capillary blush condensing into interlocking rows of pearlescent nodular nubbins like-

 _-like_ ** _corn_** , he thought, kicking his chair backwards and bringing the pistol up.

 _"I saw Spenser,"_ she hissed, then _coughed_ , yellow dust - _pollen?_ \- erupting from her mouth in a cloud that fogged the air.

He shot her. Twice in the chest, center of mass, then a third as recoil brought her head into his sight picture.

Tattletale toppled forward, forehead cracking into the front of his desk as she fell.

He let out a tight, controlled breath. _At least she still_ bleeds _red-_

His musing was interrupted by a series of soft, irregular detonations and a smell bleeding through the pungent odor of a firearm being discharged; why, he'd smelled it last week, when-

-when he'd microwaved some popcorn for a movie.

He should have ended the timeline right there. Certainly, he'd planned to shoot Tattletale, but it was supposed to have been _fun_ , not something that left sweat pooling in the small of his back and his arms itching where that flagrantly-yellow pollen had settled onto the black of his bodysuit.

 _But it was just a timeline_ , he thought. _A non-critical one, at that. Why not take a look?_

( _And besides_ , a certain atavistic part of him continued, _she smelled_ ** _delicious_** _.)_

He sidestepped around the desk, bringing his sidearm up as he saw-

-he saw hair, pale and fine as corn silk-

-he saw where there _wasn't_ , neither hair nor the back of her head-

-he saw _corn_ , manifest, manifold, many-folded-

-he saw her head turn, looking up at him with one eye bright-cornfield-green.

 _"Ssssaw..."_ she croaked, one hand reaching towards him, stretching closer and closer until the fabric of her costume parted and he saw the green stalks lying underneath. _"Spenser..."_

He pulled the trigger until the magazine was empty, then tried to run.

The corn was waiting.


	17. Interlude: Playing Telephone

_She sees the girl on the gurney._

_She sees pale face and torn clothes and freely-flown blood and twisted limb._

_She touches the girl._

_She touches the girl and she_ knows _her, all the violations of her anatomy from the slowly-blooming congenital to the avulsive abruptness that brought the girl to her._

_She doesn't let go of the girl._

_She doesn't let go as her intent is expressed through capillary and tendon and axon sheathed in myelin, bowing like catenaries under the bridge-backed arc of her will._

_She loses herself in her work, in her resolution._

_And Victoria opens her eyes._

_Victoria opens her eyes, and they are the color of fresh green, hungry for the sun._

* * *

Amy woke up screaming,

"Ames- _Ames_ , it's okay- it's _okay_ -"

She was in Vicky's arms, curled up tight in her robe as Vicky flew them home- well, _had been_ flying them home, their flight path downgrading as her sister brought them to a skidding halt on top of a nearby building.

"Now." Victoria set her down on top of a convenient air-conditioning stack. "Spill. You come out of the PRT building, pass out in my arms, and then start screaming in my arms like you did when we were kids and we watched _Silent Hill_ on a dare."

She wasn't. She wasn't going to. She was an honorary doctor, even if she never had to deal with HIPAA or the green book with all the procedures, she wasn't going to give in _again_ to Vicky's solemn, soulful puppy eyes that just begged her to violate her oaths and breach her confidentialities...

"...they wanted me to see someone." She breathed in. "A girl. And she was-"

She remembered dream-Victoria's eyes and stopped, shuddering.

"Vicky, she was _wrong_."

Soft blue eyes watched her, confused. "Like, sick, or hurt, or-"

"No! She was- it was _wrong_ , like-like- like, bad- _dream_ wrong, like..."

She wasn't _getting it._ Amy scrubbed at her eyes, the ends of her sleeves folded in and clenched in her fingers so she wouldn't- wouldn't-

"It was like... going into a preschool, and seeing a kid eating double-A batteries with her carrot sticks. Totally normal kid, totally normal batteries."

"Batteries?"

"J... it's an analogy. If you saw a kid eating batteries, you'd _flip your shit_ -"

"-dependsonthekid-"

"- _Vicky_."

"-sorry."

"...fuck."

Hesitant pause.

"So... you saw this girl eating batteries?"

Amy covered her face. " _No_." The word came out as a broken sob.

"Hey. C'mon." Vicky carefully patted her sister on the back, trying to ignore how she tensed at the contact. "Just tell me what happened, okay? I'll listen, promise."

And Amy gave in and told her. About the girl and her corn-pudding brain and how Amy hadn't believed her and went to take a look-

She'd started crying at that point, leaning into her sister's embrace as she sobbed.

"Yeah, that sounds... pretty fucked up," Vicky agreed soberly. "Specially 'cause you couldn't do anything for her, huh?"

Amy just nodded. It was easier. Easier than trying to explain how she saw something _impossible,_ like a heart made of bone, calcified right down to the lacunae and still _beating_ , valves still articulate even as they should be _solid._

Easier than saying her first reaction was to _reach out_ for it with her power, instinctively trying to fix what was wrong.

"C'mon. Let's get you home. I wanna know more about this girl."

She stiffened, pushing back against her sister. "Vicky- _shit_ , god, why did I tell you, you can't just-"

"Ames. _Amy_. It's okay." Victoria smiled winningly. "I'll just call my _inside man_."

* * *

"Carlos."

"Hey."

"Hey, you'd know if we were getting another Ward, right? Leadership position and all that?"

"...Dean?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you know something about a new Ward that I don't know?"

"Look, I _heard_ something. Connected some dots. It seemed prudent to... ask, you know?"

"Heard from _who?_ "

"...I just got off the phone with Vicky-"

"Jesus, Dean!"

"Look, she's the one who called _me_ with the story about Panacea throwing a shitfit because there's some girl in the PRT building who's _made of corn-"_

"She's kidding. Dean, look, your girl's messing with you-"

"According to Vicky, Amy was screaming about her brain being _pudding_. And that's not the only thing."

"...that she was screaming about?"

"What? No! That's not the only thing on the 'new Ward' bit. Look, maybe a week or two ago, they called me up to the labs to look at Spenser's clothes.

"Who's Spenser?"

"That's her name."

"That's _who's_ name?"

"Vista, we've talked about eavesdropping."

"Your eavesdropping is my situational awareness drill. Now spill."

"...It's Spenser's name."

"Yeah, but who _is_ she?"

* * *

"Director, what the _hell_ were you thinking?!"

"The researcher in question is facing administrative discipline and censure from this department, as well as thei-"

He took advantage of _my_ daughter's generosity! And he exposed her, one of the major _healers_ on the eastern seaboard to an _unknown parahuman effect,_ and now she isn't healing _anyone!_ "

"Brandish, I want to-"

"This _incident_ reveals a startling lack of oversight in your department, _especially_ with regard to the 'Wards' under your care."

"You know as well as I do that there are _stringent_ processes in place for internal review-"

"No, Director Piggot, I _don't_. Because New Wave is not part of your little _transparency clique_. The only checks and balances I know to be in place are the ones that I _agitate for._ "

"..."

"Did I mention that my contact in the Youth Guard was _very_ interested to hear about your 'Ward-who-wasn't?' Good day, Director."


	18. 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor has a Eureka moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was inspired by the Peerless and enthusiasmic Taylor Is Really Strong in This One.

It was cold.

Like, not _really_ cold.

But cold enough that I was glad to be wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, plus a pair of Dad's old work gloves and a poncho and one of those black baller-whatsits that covered my entire head and made me look like a criminal from one of Greg Veder's video games.

 _It doesn't matter if I look like a criminal,_ I thought as I stood on the dockside pier, resisting the urge to strike a pose with my fists on my nonexistent hips.

Because tonight, I was going to be a _hero_.

My target, naturally, was the most metal sumbitch in the Docks.

No, not Lung. I smirked under my balaclava (that was it) as I looked out across the water at the _S.S. Peerless_ , the sunken container ship that was used to block access to the Brockton Bay harbor.

And I was going to get rid of it.

I pulled my Covert Coracle out of my pocket, and restored _Height_ and _Length_ and _Width_ to it before pushing it off the pier into the cold water, where it bobbed enticingly.

It wasn't much to look at: just an innertube and a tarp and a bunch of blue polyrope holding the whole thing together, but it was all I needed-

Oh. Right.

I pulled the spatula out of my other pocket, judiciously applied _Length_ and _Width_ until it was a suitable paddle.

-but it, _and the spatula_ , were all I needed to save Brockton Bay.

I dropped down into my boat and began to paddle towards the _Peerless_ like a vulcanized Baba Yaga.

* * *

Okay, just to be clear: Past-me, who thought this was a good idea?

 _Screw you_.

It turns out that a thing _most_ boats have is a thing called a _rudder_ , which is _extremely_ useful for doing really common things like _not going in circles_.

Skilled coracle operators apparently get around this through some form of overly complicated rowing called _sculling_.

My technique was less complicated and involved more splashing and swearing.

And spinning. _God,_ the spinning.

At least the tide was coming in.

* * *

I was going to have to take up running or something.

Arm-running. Thing What Do Make Arm Strong.

But I'd made it to the boat. Ship. Thing. _God, I'm sweating. This is why heroes do cardio._

I shucked a glove and put my hand to cold, rusted metal.

_Big._

The word _tolled_ in my head, a desolate carillon of steel left cold at the forge-

My hand jerked away, scraping my fingertips as I felt the concept dwindle until only the echo of it tingled in my skin.

 _"Shit."_ I hadn't realized I'd spoken until my glasses fogged.

I wracked my brain, trying to think. Had this ever happened before when I'd touched something?

No. But then again, I think the biggest thing I'd remembered touching was Dad's car, and _that_ hadn't felt like... like _this_.

I tasted salt, swallowed back acid.

It didn't change what I was here to do.

One gloved hand against the hull.

One bare hand on salt-pitted steel-

_And I fell._

_BigCorrodedWaterloggedHeavyDuctileWreckedNonbuoyantMired-_

The concepts hammered into my mind, descriptors and labels pounding at me; it was like trying to do math in my head while someone pitched pool balls at my face.

 _Heavy_. That was where I wanted to start. I grabbed it, pulled-

-and it _sank_ into me, the word resting on my limbs like a dentist's lead apron or fifteen. I was dimly aware of movement in front of me as the hull of the _Peerless_ shifted, gently rocking, my Covert Coracle starting to push away-

I pressed metaphorical fingers deep into the steel. Found _Big_ , started to draw it into myself-

I felt the mass of steel in front of me vanish, condensing into an irregular lump in my palm as my coracle pitched and I heard the roar of surf-

_Oh._

* * *

_Big._  
_Heavy._

The concepts echoed in me as I lay on the dock.

Weight pressed down on every inch of my body- not crushing, but enough so everything took _effort_ , and my _head_ -

_I almost died._

_I really almost died._

_..._

_...thanks, past-me._

_You built a really good boat, there._

My spatula was gone.

Somewhere out in the Bay, now.

There was something in my hand.

A boat.

A very small boat.

It wasn't my coracle.

I smiled.


	19. 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We learn shipping is a bad thing.

Poncho. Balaclava. Gloves: Closet.

Me: Bed.

Specifically, on my bed rather than in because I'd gotten home and everything hurt.

Who gets almost killed their first night out and walks halfway across the city to avoid Protectorate attention?

This schmoe, that's who. Thanks, past-me.

Like, this was probably the reason Armsmaster had that badass tinkercycle and thighs you could use to crush the proverbial biotinker's watermelon.

My thighs? Noodles. Noodles of pain.

I was going to have to take up running or something.

Maybe something less strenuous. Walking. Restless Leg Syndrome.

Maybe in a week, after the heat had died down.

...I had the feeling that wouldn't happen for a while.

"Kay," I mumbled into my pillow. "Operation clean up... the... Bay. 'Fter action reveeew."

Issue numero ein no bueno: The boat extraction.

You know how when you're taking a bath and you stand up, the water level in the tub drops?

It turns out that if you're a giant freaking boat in the Bay and you're suddenly much smaller, there is now a lot of freaking space that used to be full of boat but now isn't, and there is a lot of ocean that will very happily fill up all that empty space.

To summarize: Eureka.

Having a boat that was basically a giant inflatable probably saved my life.

Thanks, past-past-me.

Issue numero deux muy no bueno: My power screwed with my head.

An entire shipping...ship's worth of Heavy?

Actually weighed me down.

Not physically, at least I didn't think; I didn't sink my Covert Coracle, but the memory of how my entire body felt heavy, how moving had taken explicit conscious effort.

And Big... did something to my head.

And I can't remember what it was.

Or much of anything after I picked up the smallified Peerless.

Only that there was running.

And Armsmaster's thighs probably weren't involved.

...pity.

* * *

Someone was shaking me. "Taylor? Taylor."

"Muh." I slapped at the hand on my shoulder, trying to make it let go.

It didn't. "Taylor, you need to see this."

I opened sleep-gummed eyes, blinking until they cleared; my dad was leaning over my bed, still in his pajamas and-

His eyes were candles, burning with an emotion I could barely remember:

Hope.

And then he frowned, taking in my clothes and the likely bags under my eyes.

"Were you up late last night?"

Crap.

I smiled weakly. "...yeah. Um. Talking with Weld?"

For the record: When it came to lying to dad at whatever-the-hell-o'clock it was? I was not the best at it.

"Oh." He frowned, then his eyebrows went up. "Oh! Are you and he..."

It felt like my cheeks were on fire as I stared at him and he started to chuckle. "Dad."

We calumphed down the stairs down into the living room, catching the TV in mid-newscast.

"-amage, which experts estimate could be in the millions of dollars. Back to you, Saul."

The dapper man on the screen (presumably Saul) smiled, his teeth white against his pancaked skin. "Thank you for that, Petra. For those of you just joining us, the S.S. Peerless, the container vessel used to blockade the Brockton Bay Harbor, has been _moved_ to the northern end of the Brockton Bay Beach."

The TV cut to a helicopter camera, showing where the ship was... as well as the damage: roads blocked, buildings crushed.

"The container ship measures 1,302 feet long- a little over four football fields for you fans out there- covering most of the northern beach and extending into a portion of the Docks. The PRT are working to establish a perimeter and Protectorate heroes are on the patrol: searching for casualties, as well as determining the individuals responsible."

The view switched to Armsmaster talking about how 'the perpetrators would be identified with expediency', but all I could do was stare at the end result of my work last night.

What the fuck did I do?

[hr][/hr]

There was a message waiting for me on my computer when I finally got back to my room.
    
    
    Weld: Just got the news. You all right?
    
    Metonym: yeah
    Metonym: nobody lives in the docks
    Metonym: and it happened in the middle of the night
    Metonym: so there weren't alot of hurt people.  
    
    Weld: That's good. Be safe, okay? I've heard a lot about what something like this can do to a city.  
    
    Criminals can be... emboldened.  
    
    Metonym: Dad's already got me carrying pepper spray  
    
    Weld: Still. You might want to look into some kind of self-defense course.  
    
    Metonym: that's fair. I'll talk with dad, try and get it past him.  
    
      
    
    

I hesitated.
    
    
    Metonym: btw
    Metonym: uh
    Metonym: just a heads-up
    
    Weld: Met?
    
    Metonym: my dad might think you and I are dating  
    
      
    
    

There was a long pause.
    
    
    Weld: Hunch is going to be /crushed/. ;)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ships are big (and not just on the internet).


	20. Interlude: Bridging Over Troubled Waters

Click.

"-mplosion event - _millions_ of cubic feet of water crashing into the volume that the _Peerless_ displaced - was so forceful that it was detected on hydrophone arrays in internatio-"

Click.

"-impact of forcefully removing the container ship is currently being evaluated, but for now, experts are _currently_ concerned with the environmental hazard the _Peerless_ itself poses to Brockton Bay-"

Click.

"-ermen are up in arms, saying that the move of the _Peerless_ has affected local fishing grounds-"

Click.

"-less individuals, who were sheltering in a nearby warehouse-"

Click.

"-forces and Protectorate members, with no end in-"

"Taylor, pick a channel and stick with it- don't you have schoolwork to do?"

* * *

"Do we have anything back from WEDGDG?"

"You're not going to l-"

"Marty, _someone_ took a derelict ship, pulled it out of the water, dropped it a mile and a half down the beach, and the first we heard about it was from some offshore NOAA geeks listening to whales screwing. Tell me we have _something_."

A sigh.

"Watchdog got back to us, yes."

"Marty. If you keep burying the lede, I'm going to have your proctologist dig it out of you."

"...their response is, and I quote, 'we have no fucking clue.' Literally their words."

"What."

"Look, Appraiser's response was 'geosmin', whatever the hell that means. Exacta said something about 'asking the Colonel', and all Ogger had was 'Green. Really, really, really bright green, go away I have a headache.'"

"Jesus."

"There's more, but... here, I'll just forward it to you."

* * *

"ARMSMASTER WHAT DO WE KNOW?!?!"

"I'm not Armsmaster, Dennis. And you don't need to yell."

"...nobody gets my memes."

Carlos smirked and uncapped a marker. "So, as Dennis has so _ably_ pointed out, I just got back from the Protectorate shindig where they started laying out what happened last night, and _I_ thought-"

"-nooooooooo-"

"-we could make it _educational_ by having our own workup session!"

"...I wish I had 'earnest sadism' as a superpower, just like Aegis does."

"What's sadism?"

"Aaaaaand you can explain _that_ to Missy when we're off the clock, Dennis. Where do you want to start, Carlos?"

The youth grinned at Dean before writing 'NEARSHORE' at the top of the whiteboard in spidery black capitals. "Nearshore. That's the name the PRT has given whoever did-."

"Carlos, that's a permanent marker."

"What?" He frowned down at the marker, turning it in his hand and finally mumbling a very quiet "...aw, shit."


	21. 16

Dad kicked me out of the office break room; said I had to 'focus on my schoolwork instead of rubbernecking.'

I sat at the desk in my office and stared at a book assignment without really seeing it, my thoughts a dizzying, whirling blur.

I'd done something. I'd really _done something_ , all right.

What was the phrase the guy in the office had used the other day? _Screwed the pooch_ , that was it.

That sounded pretty close to what I'd done. Hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of estimated property damage, people in the hospital from collapsed structures.

Breaking stuff was bad- I remember feeling awful when I'd broken one of the windows on our house with a yo-yo when I was younger and didn't understand physics (or consequences)- but... hurting _people_?

It preyed at me. Gnawed at my guilt like a baby dog with a shoe.

Puppy. That was the word.

I had to talk to someone.

> From: Metonym  
>  To: Weld  
>  Subject: |

I stared at the blinking cursor until it blurred and I had to blink.

This wasn't going to work.

...but I thought I knew what would.

* * *

_Salient._

_Unique._

_Fragile._

_Secondhand._

I'd always liked Lord's Market. It felt... organic, more _alive_ than the Boardwalk.

Even with powers, that hadn't changed.

"Looking for something in particular, Spenser?"

Well, hadn't changed _much_.

I hadn't been out in public much before now- hadn't had much _reason_ to go out, but after the thing with Dad, I needed some space to think.

I shook my head at the woman running the stall, pulling my fingers back from a tchotchke advertised as Handmade that wasn't _Handmade_. "Just browsing, I guess."

People seemed more... _familiar_ with me, like...

Well, like we'd already been introduced. Which we had, albeit one-sidedly.

I passed by a kid my age, sitting on a weed-shattered curb and busking with his guitar. He winked and I blushed, hurrying along and leaving the lyrics behind me.

_"And now we're bound for old Saint John's_  
_Where all the girls are dancing..."_

Out here, in the sun, the music and the swirling press of marketgoers around me in one bustling human stream, I could put aside what I'd done.

I could put aside that I was probably Public Enemy Number Probably Less Than Ten.

And then I heard a familiar voice, calling me a name that's not mine.

_Emma._

I stared at her in shock, watching her mouth move as she regurgitated withering scorn, her eyes bloodshot, her hair frizzed-

I hadn't seen her in almost a month and she looked _terrible,_ a burning hate in her eyes that I didn't have the capacity to deal with today.

She sneered, _tore_ at me with words weighted to be more than she thought I could bear, unhinged and wild, uncouth and uncoiffed and taking step and step and step again towards me even as I backed away-

That's when I backed into someone; strong hands grabbed at my arms, held me still as a man asked "Miss, is this girl bothering you?"

I twist, trying to get free even as I see the hate twisting Emma's face turn to surprise in her eyes.

"Spenser?" His voice was firm comfort, like hugging an amusement park mascot. "It's all right."

I half-turn in his grip and realize it's one of the market enforcers, looking down at me.

Talking to _me_.

"Junkies." He snorted, dismissive. "Usually they're not this aggressive. Don't worry, we'll take care of her."

Emma's eyes narrowed; she opened her mouth, ready to say something prurient and cutting-

And that's when the _other_ enforcer grabbed her, getting her in a painful-looking submission hold before wheeling her around and starting to walk her to the exit.

I looked up at the man, who tries a comforting smile as he pats my shoulder. "H-he's not going to hurt her, right?"

Through the crowd, I could hear a faint "-my daddy's a LAWY- ow ow ow OW!"

"Oh, of course not."


	22. 17

"So, uh." Keys jingled as I flipped through them, balancing self and shopping bag on the top step up to our front door. "What's your favorite food?"

Weld had called after I'd told him about the thing with Emma at the Market; well, he'd _asked_ if he could call, and I, like a shy idiot, prevaricated until he called anyway just to see if I was okay.

Things... had progressed from there.

"It's not really public knowledge," he said, his voice hesitant, burred with static and something I couldn't identify. "But... I don't really _get_ flavor when I eat food? Metallic tastebuds don't work like normal."

"Oh- _oh_." I hesitated, key half-turned in the lock. "I... god, I'm sorry-"

"-No, no, it's all right," he said. "Like I said, it's not common knowledge, you had no way of knowing."

Silence fell as I opened my front door and went inside.

"...do you have a _least_ favorite food?" I finally asked, wincing as the words came out because it was a _dumb question_ -

His reply was immediate. "Breakfast cereal. Tried it once, never again."

I let out a little snicker as I set down my bag and pulled off my shoes. "What, like _any_ breakfast cereal? What happened?"

He coughed and I heard his chair creak and suddenly felt awkward all over again. "Oh geez, I'm sorry, that's a weird question-"

Weld laughed at that, warm and brassy, and I felt a little better. "No, no, it's just... it's an _old_ story, from back when I'd just joined the Wards. See, everyone had woken up and they'd invited me down to the cafeteria for breakfast..."

I listened to him as I shlumped up the stairs to my room.

"And the thing is," he said, "none of us remembered that a lot of breakfast cereals are nutritionally fortified... and in the raisin bran I was eating, there were actual _iron filings_."

"There was _metal_ in your cereal?"

"It turns out that's how they supplement your iron intake, yeah. Actual pieces of metal that you eat."

"Wait. Waaaaaaait." I dropped down in my desk chair. "You... you _stick_ to metal, right? I remember something about that. So you were eating cereal, and all that metal was..."

"I only found out at the PR shoot I had after breakfast, when they told me to smile."

"Oh no."

"And everyone saw my _furry black teeth._ "

"Noooo." I shuddered. "Weld, that's _awful_."

"It's not the _weirdest_ thing I've ever eaten, though."

"...do I want to know?" I finally asked.

"You're on Parapet, right?"

Parapet was the Protectorate's internal social-networking site; originally a microblogging site for heroic cat pictures, it had grown into a full multimedia network by the time I'd joined.

Weld had an _incredibly_ eclectic music podcast, Flechette had a [food blog](https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/flechettes-foodie-forays-worm-foodfic-collab.687052/), Flickerfleet had a series of workshop videos on poi...

"Taylor?"

"Uh? Oh, yeah, I'm on there; I just don't post much." I chuffed a little laugh. "You know, boring old me."

I heard him smile. "I highly doubt that. Anyways, when you get online, check out the tag #weldcronch. That's octothorpe-weld-c-r-o-n-c-h."

I stopped in the middle of shoving a bunch of papers off my tablet. "What the hell's an octothorpe?"

"I forget what you kids call it? Two lines vertical, two lines horizontal?"

My fingers froze mid-login. "...Weld, that's a _pound sign_."

There was a long pause before we both started snickering.

"So, wait, you said _cronch?_ " I ask, tapping at my screen again.

* * *

"Weld."

"Taylor."

I rewound the video, listened to the tinny sounds as the group of Wards surrounding Weld chant and cheer as he picks up a cup ramen and _eats it like an apple_ , the squeak-crunch sound of styrofoam and fried noodles under his teeth uncannily familiar - almost like the crisp-foam rasp of biting into a Granny Smith.

"This is-" I restarted the video again, winced a little at the sound as he chewed.

Swallowed, the sound like a gauntleted fist crushing mouse bones.

"Yeah." He managed to sound faintly abashed. "Uh... this is the part where I warn you about the dangers of peer pressure?"

"I- I..." I scrolled down through the search results; stopped, and watch a video autoplay of Weld in a vintage bathing suit, sitting in a wooden beach chair and eating gumdrops out of a glass bowl.

Only gumdrops don't crunch.

The video, naturally, is captioned _He Eats Seaglass By The Seashore._

In the end, I had only one question.

"Why?"

He made an uneasy noise. "Well... part of it was..." He quiets for a minute, and I didn't interrupt.

"When you're a Case 53," he said finally, "you don't... you're _isolated_ in ways people don't really think about. You don't look like everyone else, you don't have _memories_ the way everyone else does."

"I was alone," he continued. "A real standout guy, and all I wanted to do back then was fit in, be a part of something... and, well, peer pressure can get you to do weird things, you know?"

Seconds ticked past, fives and tens and thirties.

"I'm sorry," he said eventually. "We were having fun and I went on a downer."

"No, no, it's..."

I swallowed. Thought about Winslow, about being alone.

"I get it," I said. "I really do."


	23. Forecasts: We Cannot Get Out

_We cannot get out._

_The hull of the_ Peerless _bounds our world._

_It wasn't always like this._

_We had a world that was a world._

_We had a world that was a city._

_Now our world is an ark, waiting for the rain._

_(The corn waits for the rain: vast and green, patterned in impossibly-straight rows that pay no heed to the strictures of urban planning.)_

* * *

_Kaiser's gingerbread men post themselves outside, patrol in roving circles that bear more resemblance to ant-trails than they do to perimeters._

_"Left," they chant, hoarse voices forming a round of familial abandonment and endless, recursed hunger._

_They have nothing but gingerbread left._

* * *

_We lost another one today._

_I watched him double over, retching; dry kernels of seed corn spilled from his mouth, a torrent of dream-teeth in whites and yellows._

_The sound reminded me of hailstones on the roof._

* * *

_We cannot get out._

_But I'm not sure if there's anywhere to go anymore._


	24. Interstice: Tension, Apprehension...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for corn-related body horror. End notes contain chapter deets if you want to skip it.

"OhmyGodyou're _Panacea!"_

He says it just like that, just like _everyone_ does; they see her and the words rush out of them in a torrent, like speaking the words that identify her will hold her in place long enough for them to ask for a boon.

She can't run. They're not Protectorate, but New Wave is just as dependent on good PR, especially with 'Panacea being a hero who engages with the public closely'; Carol's drilled that into her head with her characteristic, slightly annoyed trepan.

She won't run, because there's no point; her adoring public waits on every corner, _around_ every corner, waiting there for her guard to drop.

She wishes she could go home.

* * *

His name is Gre-

His name starts with a G. She doesn't get much beyond that, doesn't _care_ much beyond that as she lets his torrent of a thousand inanities come tumbling down around her ears, the same social niceties she's heard time and time and time again.

The excitement of finally getting to meet her.  
Appreciating her for her service, dismissing her sacrifice.  
(Implying she's Good, but never good _enough_.)

And then the words trail off, effusive ebullience shifting to skirting shyness. They avoid her eyes, dance around the topic, hoping she'll make the step.

Hoping _she'll_ talk about healing, make the offer for them so it's not them asking.

So it's not their _demand_.

So they're not the greedy ones.

[hr][/hr]

The moment approaches and she's been dreading it, dreading the question no one's come around to ask her:

_When are you going to start healing again?_

Her family's been silent on it; Dad just looks at her with dull eyes, Victoria tries to be supportive in all the wrong ways...

...and Carol has started writing out her hospital schedule on the family calendar, crossing out the entries in red marker, each penstroke a blazon on her heart that draws a path of her failure.

* * *

He's stopped talking.

He stopped talking and he hasn't said the H-word, not once.

She looks up at him, sees him looking back at her.

"What?" they ask, almost together, the word forming a sort of wavering harmony.

And then he looks at her. _Really_ looks at her, not with any kind of penetrating, incisive gaze that leaves her soul bare to be appraised.

It's more of a soft, watery look, his blue eyes glinting with something that might be understanding.

And he asks if she's okay.

It's unexpected, and just as unexpected is the explanation he launches into as she stares at him, utterly unprepared for his story of how she, Panacea, apparently looks like his mother when she comes home from work with a box of wine and gets tipsy and tells him _all_ about her day and the assholes she works with and how she feels better after that.

"I mean, she usually feels better the next morning, after the hangover and stuff. And I can't get you wine because I'm underage, but we could totally make pruno, I saw a video on that and I have some fruit snacks left over from my lunch last week. And you could yell at me until you feel better. If you wanna, I mean."

Amy bursts into tears.

* * *

They're sitting on a park bench, watching skinheads shoot out streetlights with slingshots.

She's having trouble finding the words, now that she has the opening for them; they sputter on her lips, crack and flare like the lights winking out across the park.

How can she explain that she's _scared_ of healing now, how Fibonacci spirals of cream-white kernels dance on the insides of her eyelids, how there are times when she's tired and the teal of medical scrubs goes a vibrant, verdant green.

How she touches someone and she can't see how to make them _better_.

"I was healing someone," she finally says. "And-"

She can't make the words. Can't describe the ineffable, even here where it's easier.

Even here, where the watery blue eyes watching her aren't Vicky's.

"Hey," he says, right as she's about to say something. "Hey, it's okay, you know that?"

She looks up at him, unspilled tears making his face shimmer and warp into something almost inhuman before she blinks them away.

She sees his eyes, his face, how they're shining with something uncomfortably like faith as the lights keep going out.

"See, you're a hero." He says it, and the words carry the innocent weight of childlike belief.

"And sometimes heroes have a crisis of faith, that happens all the time in my animes, and then they go out onto a dark city street or onto a rooftop, and they meet a magical child or they scream at some pigeons about how the world isn't fair and then that gives them, like, a _revelation_ about who they really are, something that gives them the clarity to keep going and Do What's Right."

Something about this begins to feel wrong, aberrant, what one of Vicky's professors might call _unheimlich_ ; the boy hasn't drawn breath, hasn't _paused_ to draw breath, and yet he's somehow still speaking.

"See, it's like my Oh See, that's my Original Character on the PHO RP-"

He pronounces it 'phorp', like his mouth is a raygun; she's had enough, lurching to her feet and starting to back away from the boy on the bench.

"No! Panacea! Wait!" The words come out as yelps, animalistic; she's reminded of a nature program her dad was watching about hyenas.

He lurches up from the bench as well, lunges at her, hands outstretched, face pleading.

"Let me be your magical boy-"

His hands find hers.

* * *

She is Artemis and the boy is Actaeon; he sees her in her vulnerability, intrudes, imposes, and the divine in her _changes_ him.

She touches someone and she can't see how to make them better.

She touches someone and she can't see how to make them anything but _corn_.

And that's what he becomes: her power gives her a terrifyingly intimate awareness of how his skin bubbles into ridges of plump kernels, conglomeration and division reminding her of videos of cells undergoing mitosis.

She watches his heart stop, his nerves go dark as his heart stops being a heart, as his nerves stop being nerves.

As the boy stops being a boy, until there's nothing of him left under her hands, no human DNA or non-vegetable protein base.

Until all that's left of fingers and toes and eyes and dreams...

...is _ears._

* * *

She buries him, hands muffled in cloth as she paws out a hole in turf and living soil, shoves corn and clothes down, down, down and covers him over until she can't see any sign of what she's done.

Across the park, there's a rough cheer as the last streetlight goes out.

She stands there in the dark until her eyes adjust as far as they're going to. Until she can see the torn grey turf and can't decide whether she's seeing it, or her mind's eye is telling her it's there.

 _I killed someone tonight_ , she thinks, torn between hysteria, giddiness, despair. _I killed someone and buried them and and and and-_

"George. Gray." She tries not to laugh, not in the middle of an eulogy. "Whoever the fuck you were."

Her words run out again, and she lifts her head, looks at the shimmering stars.

The only words her lips find are weary with despair.

"Jesus fucking christ, I just wanted a _slushie_."

* * *

She's gone.

The lights are out.

And from the mound of disturbed earth, a green shoot bursts into the air...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> END SUMMARY: Panacea is having a bad night and runs into a boy. She accidentally turns him into corn and buries him in a park. Plants start growing.


	25. 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Give thanks to Zira, who made a suggestion that made this chapter way more horrifying.

_"The needs of the few..."_

_"...or the one."_

_"...no...!"_

_They draw away from each other, staring into each other's eyes, a father and a friend pulled closer than ever by their shared loss._

_"Forgive me." The Vulcan's voice was soft, whispery with fatigue like dry desert grass. "It is not here. Everything he was... everything he knew, it is lost. And when I return home, many shall mourn."_

_He turns, moves for the door_

_"Please. Wait." Kirk watches him still, unmoving, not looking back._

_Orpheus before first light._

_"He would have found a way. Spock... he would have found a way, there was so much at stake!"_

_And Sarek glances back. Turns. Hesitates. "Yes. But how?"_

_###########_

_Sarek reaches out to key the door to the detention center. Stops and looks at Kirk, hand halfway to the keypad._

_"You are prepared to commit to this action? Make this sacrifice?"_

_Kirk can't help but smile, chipper and brash. "Are you?"_

_And Sarek just looks at him. "I have not had a reason to abuse my diplomatic immunity for many years, Kirk. To do so for my son is... logical."_

_They toggle the door, storm the room, kirk stuns the guards at the desk while Sarek disables the one by the callbox with a deft pinch and twist, lowering the unconscious man to the floor._

_Kirk moves over to the detention cell, looks through the glowing field, isn't ready to see someone there with McCoy, draped over the sleeping man's chest like a lithe, girlish blanket._

_"Bones. -Bones!-" Jim called out, trying to get his friend's attention- tryin to get him to wake up-_

_-and then he flinches back as a blur impacts the fieldgate between him and the inside of the cell_

_Sparks fly, static courses through empty air as claws seemingly dig into the matrix of the forcefield tiself, flickering inconstant light luming a face twisted in savagery and anger, one eye blue, one eye yellow, both narrowed in pure, primal rage._

_Spock's Catra. His spirit manifest, raw, physical._

_She looks into Kirk's eyes and hisses, a thick wet-spittle sound._

_"One human, one not," Sarek says from just behind him. "Yet both in pain."_

I lifted my gaze from the words on my screen, looked up at the fidgeting pixels of Hunch's webcam feed, further up at the bezel camera.

"It's. Um."

I scrolled back up, skimmed through again as Hunch smiled nervously in the corner of my screen.

"...what gave you the idea?" I finally asked, watched his smile widen into true enthusiasm as he started to explain.

Hunch was a sweet kid; we'd first met a while back, when he had needed some extra eyes on a book report he'd been working on.

We started talking about more than homework, his book report turned into a conversation about creative writing, and it turned out what he'd really needed was a friend.

(It turns out that's what _I'd_ needed, too.)

I listened to him talk, as he started to get into the nitty-gritty of someone named 'The Diet Jesus' and how they related to everyone else in the story-

-and then his voice was drowned out by the rise-and-fall of a klaxon alarm, flat and tinny through the tablet's speakers-

-echoed a moment later by my cell phone.

A sound that only had one meaning:

_Endbringer._

"Weld? _Weld!?_ "

I started to ask Hunch what was going on, but he'd already vanished, pushing his chair back and disappearing from view.

In the sudden silence, I heard a noise from downstairs, sharp and staccato.

Someone knocking at our door, brisk and imperative.

I tossed Tabby on my bed, bounded down the stairs, headed for the front door-

-and then the knock came again, and I stopped, because it wasn't coming from our front door.

It was coming from the other side of the house.

I ran back through the house, looked through our back window.

And for a moment, I didn't do anything besides stare.

And then I reached for the doorknob, pulled it un- _Closed_.

And I looked through the open doorway at _Alexandria_ , hovering on my back porch.

She looked at me, and I watched her lips quirk, twist; something I'd seen often enough, the sibilant and plosive forming the start of _Spenser-_

"Metonym," she finally said. Followed it up with a smile, and I was struck by how _young_ she looked from this close-up, how she didn't look like she was even out of college yet.

Also she knew my name.

The _most important woman in the world knew my name holy crap_ -

"I need your help to save the world."

 _Holy_ ** _crap_**.

* * *

"Your power testing results came under Watchdog review - they're a department of Thinkers who work for the PRT - and they came to the conclusion that you seem to have a disruptive effect on precognitives."

For a moment, I wasn't sure where she was going with this, and then I connected the dots.

Because who's the biggest friggin' precog in the whole _world?_ The _Simurgh_.

And who's just come down in Canberra?

 _Yeah_.

"Oh god." I looked up at Alexandria. "You want me to help save Scotland."

"Australia. But yes, I need your help."

I tried to collect myself. Tried to think around _Alexandria_ saying _I need your help_.

"...it's going to be dangerous, isn't it?" I finally asked.

"It's an Endbringer battle," Alexandria said, but her voice was soft, didn't carry harshness or reproach. "There's always risk when you go to fight them, no matter how safe you think you are."

There's something in her voice, a note of honest vulnerability, and I almost miss her next words in the realization that _Alexandria_ is at least a little afraid whenever she goes to fight an Endbringer.

"But you're noncombat; we'll put you with command and administration, Thinker support: out of immediate danger, but close enough your inhibitory effect might still have a chance of working and catching the Simurgh in your decision cone."

I thought about it.

I didn't think about it for long.

"...I need to leave a note for my dad."

* * *

_Dad:_

_Out helping save the world. Back later._

_-love, Taylor_

* * *

_Ovoid. Hollow. Noisy. Telemetry-Enabled._

I looked at the maraca I was holding, watched the silver circuit-traces of Dragon's logo gleam in the ceiling lights.

"So I just shake the maraca-"

"-entropy source-"

"-right, so I just shake it?"

"That's right. It's got, ah, motion sensors embedded in it, and we can feed the data from those as a random seed into the command network for everyone fighting."

I tilted my hand, let the maraca roll from side to side. "Uh-huh."

"Your power makes what you do hard for precogs to see, Spenser," Dragon said. 'So we use this to make what you do into part of what _everyone_ does."

...okay, that made sense.

I just wished she'd stop calling me Spenser.

* * *

The bunker smelled like fear.

I'd never smelled fear before, but the bunker definitely smelled like fear, acrid and metallic with a hint of tomato-sauce body odor.

It smelled like fear, but people weren't afraid; they bustled, subdued, like catering staff at a funeral.

The air around me was filled with quiet voices, people in quiet discussion, the armbands chiming with casualty reports.

_Gellicose, down._

_Tontine, deceased._

_Churchkey, down._

I watched the screens on the walls, the camera feeds they had on the Simurgh.

I watched people die.

And I sat in a bunker, listening to the hiss and clatter of beads and bearings as I shook a tinkertech maraca. Listened to it click and clash like a rain stick with that soft _chka-chka-chk_.

 _Mariachi at the end of the world,_ I thought.

One of the screens caught my eye: a tactical feed, displaying a scrolling list of the dead and injured:

> Swarfy  
>  Painini  
>  Ergodick  
>  Nobody's Peasant  
>  Synomine  
>  Escalier  
>  Repast

I watched the names tick past, read the acrostic written in human suffering.

And then I looked at the camera feed, at the Simurgh hovering in the middle of a circle of telekinetic ruin.

And right as I did, she turned, looked right at the camera.

Looked right at _me_ , pinned me with her gaze, and I felt prickles run up my spine.

And she _smiled_ , a flicker of expression so quick I almost missed it.

We watched as the Simurgh cast aside the tinkertech she'd been working on, carelessly hurling it to one side without even a glance, paying no mind to the flying figure she took out.

We watched as she held up empty hands, a mockery of surrender and a magician's denunciation of trickery all in one.

And she brought her hands together.

Did it again.

And again.

And again.

We watched as she clapped a silent rhythm, a perfect counterpoint to the beat I was shaking.

 _"Hard override,"_ a voice said, harsh over the speakers as it broke the almost-introspective silence.

 _"It's her song. It's changed, it's not_ ** _noise_** _anymore, there's- there's a pattern to it-"_

The voice withdrew, muted a little as it pulled away from the pickup.

And then we heard the scraping shuffle as the cape drummed their fingers against the microphone in their armband, a muffled _whack-ticka-ticka-THUMP-THUMP-clack_.

 _"That's- it's not right. It's not_ ** _right_**." We listened to him breathe.

"Armband telemetry," someone close to me said quietly as we watched points of light swirl across the tactical map. "We have groupings disengaging from combat efforts."

Another audio feed came on line.

Another.

And another.

We sat in the bunker and listened to scrapes and thumps and taps and shuffles cohere, resolving to a common center, cohering around a strange attractor.

A _rump-tippy-tippy-tum-TAH-tee_.

We watched the Simurgh clap, and we listened to the city _dance_.

I'd let the maraca fall to the table.

* * *

Jet engines whined, the roar of white noise filled the air with oppressive, heavy static.

I sat on the roof of the bunker, watched Dragoncraft airlift curved sections of dome into place around Canberra, weld them into place.

We'd failed.

We'd had to go through Thinker checks- _everyone_ had had to go through Thinker checks, after what had happened.

We'd failed, and I hadn't done anything.

I hadn't been able to help.

"Hey, Spenser?"

I looked over my shoulder, saw a dark-haired girl in a purple bodysuit with white armor panels, a quiver over one shoulder. "...hi?"

"I'm Flechette. New York Wards?"

"Uh. Metonym." I saw her squint behind her visor, and quickly added. "Everyone calls me Spenser, don't worry about it."

I scooted over and she sat down next to me after a moment, the two of us watching another curved segment of dome exterior move into position.

"Have you eaten?"

I started, glancing over at her. "Uh, no, not really... not since breakfast, I guess."

She reached into a belt pouch, pulled out a snack bar, passed it to me.

 _Calorie-Dense. Hypoallergenic_.

I unwrapped it, took a bite, tasted imitation coconut; she watched, her gaze appraising.

"Thinker?"

I shook my head, swallowed. "Stranger, I guess? I kinda mess with precognitives, I think."

She hummed softly. "Makes sense."

We sat and watched the dome go up for a little while.

"Is it always like this?" I finally asked.

"After her?"

"Yeah."

She picked at one of her boot cleats with a fingernail. "They're _all_ like this, really. There's... always that sense of... futility, I guess? Like we're ants in the face of something greater and impossible. Like we're fighting in a war we're never going to win, one holding action after another, always trying to delay the worst, because nothing you do will ever turn the tide."

There was the soft, far-off _crump_ of a detonation.

"...how do you deal with that?" I asked. "How do you keep coming back, when this is what's always waiting for you?"

_How do you fight when every battle is a losing one?_

Flechette was quiet for a while. "Legend probably said it better; he had a speech a year or two ago that I remember, with this big metaphor about starfish on a beach."

"Yeah?"

"...what it comes down to, I guess, is... being aware you made a difference? That you being here changed things for the better, even if it was only for one or two people."

She looked at me, tried a smile, kind and encouraging. "It's like... I saved a couple of people today. And... it was me, being in someone's life for less than a minute, but I changed the _rest of their lives_.

"We did what we could," Flechette said. "And it's more than if we did nothing at all."

I let out a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding. "Yeah."

"You know." Her fingers touched my Endbringer armband. "If you're worried... you could always ask Dragon. She keeps track of everything at these fights, she'd know if you made a difference."

"Isn't she..." I gestured at the dome-in-progress with my half-eaten food bar.

"Busy?"

"Yeah."

Flechette shrugged with one shoulder. "The armbands automatically prioritize stuff. She might not get back to you right away, but she'll get back to you."

I thought about it for a little while. Maybe it was the food, maybe it was the conversation, but... I wasn't feeling as bad as I'd been.

I could ask Dragon, or Alexandria, or someone.

Someone would know if I'd changed things for the better. If I'd done good.

If I'd made a difference.

I looked out at the outlet of people from the Thinker quarantine, saw a glint of steely skin.

_Weld?_


	26. 19

"Weld? WELD!" I pushed to my feet, started running down the glacis slope of the bunker toward him.

Weld was just standing there, stripped to the waist with a patch of chain-link fence stuck to his back, talking to someone, a big stingray-fellow.

He heard me call his name, looked back over his shoulder, burnished irides widening in surprise and shock.

"Spenser? No, waitSTOP-"

I ran into his arms.

* * *

"Awhg."

"-no, look, you have to pinch up _here_ -"

"- _you_ pinch, if I do it too hard I'll end up crushing-"

Fingertips pressed against my temples, guided my head back. I tasted pennies, gagged, spat a thick clot of something out.

"Awoh. Ohb my Gob."

Inertia, it turns out, is kind of a bitch.

* * *

My nose had finally stopped bleeding, and I'd finally convinced Weld to stop apologizing for calling me Spenser - it was an emergency, these things happen, right?

He'd shrugged on his costume top (padded, so people wouldn't get hurt if they ran into him) and I leaned against his shoulder, eyes closed.

"Met."

It took me a second to remember, another to respond. "Wel."

"How are you feeling? Still lightheaded?"

I shook my head slightly, felt my face press into his _Impact-Absorbent_ sleeve. "Nnn. Better."

"Good." His posture shifted; I felt him pull away, caught myself before I lost balance. "Because we need to talk."

I could still taste blood.

He looked at me, the lines down his cheeks casting his face into a grave mien.

"S-Metonym." His voice was low, a rough whisper. "What are you even _doing_ here, this was an _Endbringer_ fight! How did you even ge-" He stared at my face. "You don't even have a _mask-_ "

"They don't help."

He continued like he hadn't heard me. "-were you even _doing_ , you're a _negative_ Stranger. What did you think was going to happen?"

He was silent then, a hand heavy on my shoulder as he watched my face, waited for a response.

He didn't have to wait long.

"Do you know how I got here?" My voice was small, shaking; a reaction to the almost-paternal tone in his voice and the familiarity of a friend's voice raised in chastisement. " _Alexandria_ knocked on my back door, told me I wasn't going to save Scotland, and brought me here, and then Dragon, _Dragon_ , gave me a goddamn _maraca_ -"

My throat was tight; it felt like the world was coming apart under the weight of a dancing angel and the hand on my shoulder.

"They said I could help," I said. "And I tried, I _did_ -"

My eyes were burning, I drew in a shaking breath that was almost a sob.

And Weld pulled me into a well-padded embrace as I began to cry.

* * *

"I'm sorry."

I sniffled, sniffed, felt a clot of something thick and bloody bubble through my head and land on my tongue. I spat it onto the ground.

Great expectorations, right?

"It's okay. Really. I get it."

"I just... Met, I saw you here. I saw you _here_ , and-"

I brought a hand up, covered his mouth with my palm. "Weld. It's _okay_. Really."

It wasn't, not really. The way Weld had reacted - did all the people who knew me as Metonym think of me as... as...

...as just 'the useless Stranger girl?'

I wasn't sure I liked that. It reminded me too much of Winslow, of Emma and Madison and Sophia...

It reminded me of _before_.

A metal finger hooked around my wrist, tugged my hand; I looked up from my introspection, found Weld watching me, one eyebrow arched in almost-Vulcan inquiry.

I pulled my hand away from his face, felt my fingertips brush shining-smooth lips, felt my cheeks burn. "Sorry."

"That's my line." He smiled, squeezed my hand.

Didn't let go, even as his fingers warmed against mine.

"You okay? You went a little quiet there."

I squeezed his hand, felt his fingers crook and shift as he squeezed back.

"...You were worried about me."

He didn't have to reply, barely had to nod; I looked into his eyes, read assent in molten silver like Pythia with a crucible.

"Because I can't take care of myself?" I forced the words out, forced myself to watch his face, his eyes.

I didn't break, didn't turn away.

And neither did he.

"...that's a part of it," he finally said. "T-Met, you're not like me. You... when I woke up, I was just a head and a little bit more. I've been shot, impaled, I-I've stood in front of cars going at _freeway_ speeds."

His other hand came around, covered mine, careful and cool against my skin.

"People... you're fragile. Easier to hurt, harder to heal." He looked down at our hand sandwich, dusky metal ensconcing flesh and a pulse.

My heart was hammering. For all that he wasn't human, my power was silent; that recusal telling me in no uncertain terms that he was alive, that he was a _person_.

"I haven't had much of a chance to know you," he said. "And what we've had, hasn't been much-- emails and videoconferencing being what they are."

I made a faint noise of dissent. I liked those emails.

"But... I've seen who you are around me. Who you are around Hunch."

"I-"

He cut himself off, closed his eyes as he drew in a breath.

"If something happened to you, you would be missed. And I wouldn't be alone in missing you." His voice was rough, emotion coming through in harmonies like the shrill breath of a flute, and my eyes burned and swam.

"Weld-"

"I don't want you to get hurt, Taylor."

I sniffled again, the sense of blood washed away with salt. Reached up with my free hand to touch the line of his jaw, found a spot that had been twisted and pinched under the impact of some shrapnel that was still partly embedded in him.

Felt _Metal_ , _Truncated, Sharp_. Pulled out the former, felt the sharp bit of what had once been metal shift under my touch as his body relinquished hold. Pulled it free of the embrace of his flesh, held it carefully between us as though it were some rare and precious gem.

"I can take care of myself, though," I said, and watched as he took his hand off mine, massaged the tear in his flesh with his fingertips until the edges rejoined.

I watched his expression change, concern and compassion melting from his features and revealing something more foundational, more childish.

His hand met mine, touched metal that rejected his flesh, and all I saw in his eyes was innocence and wonder and joy, like I'd pulled off a magic trick he'd never expected to see.


	27. 20

"A blue trip slip for an eight-cent fare _,_ " Striper chanted as he circled us, the ribbon of his power rising from his blue-and-black costume and wrapping us in a trail of iridescent light. "A buff trip slip for a six-cent fare."

I was standing with Weld in the midst of a cluster of east-coast capes, waiting for departure.

Weld's hand was warm in mine; he'd been holding my hand since I agreed to come back to Boston with him.

He'd been with me since I'd plucked that bit of shrapnel out of his face, since I'd haltingly explained that my power wasn't just being Spenser, that I could sense things about objects I touched, could swap them to and fro like refrigerator poetry.

I traced one of the creases on his palm with a fingertip, remembered how he looked at me, still touching the freshly-healed patch on his jawline.

" _You used your power on me?" he asked, an aching tautness in his voice. "Made me-"_

_I was already shaking my head. "No, not you." I met his eyes, tried to smile. "You're not a thing, Weld. You know it, I know it. And... my power knows it too, I guess?"_

_He smiled back, his face etched with a deeper grief_.

His fingers curled against mine, gave them a calculated squeeze; I looked over, and found him smiling, his face creased as he returned the gentle encouragement I'd given him earlier.

"It'll be all right," he said. "We'll talk to the Director, work things out."

_We sat in one of the empty tents they'd used for evaluating capes after the fight._

_"You've had this." He weighs the little shard of shrapnel in his hand, bouncing it against his palm. "This power, since you... since people started calling you Spenser. And... you never_ told _anyone?"_

_"I..." The words caught in my throat, and_ _I shook my head._

_"Taylor..." My name was roughness on his lips, and I shuddered. "The PRT... say what you will, but power testing is_ important _. Too many powers have the potential to be dangerous, and-"_

_"I just wanted to be left_ alone _," I whispered, arms around me like I was holding myself in._

_"Taylor?" I heard his chair creak as he shifted, flinched as cool metal fingers reached for me. "I'm sorry, it's o-"_

_"_ I'm _sorry." My eyes stung. "I never told you."_

_I felt one of his hands rest on mine. "You can tell me now, if you want. I'm listening."_

_"Before-" The word came out as a croak, and I swallowed._

_"Before I got my powers... things weren't so great," I managed to say before the tears came in earnest. "And then I_ got _powers and I didn't want to be a hero, I just wanted to be left alone for_ once _-"_

_His thumb brushed over my knuckles, and I sniffed, swallowed against the aftertaste of copper. "And... and then all anyone cared about was_ Spenser _, not me or anything else I did, and... they left me alone because that's all they thought I could_ do _."_

"Punch," Striper intoned as he completed his round, and Australia dissolved in shimmering light around us.

* * *

"Miri?"

The woman at the desk looked up at us with a slight, sad smile. "Weld. I heard about Canberra. I'm sorry."

"We did what we could." He tried to smile, shrugged lopsidedly. "Sometimes that has to be enough for us. Is the Director busy? I have to talk with him about some things."

Miri's gaze flicked between us, settled on the join where our hands met, fingers intertwined, and her smile brightened ever-so-slightly. "Let me check."

She picked up her handset, pressed a button. "Director? Spenser and Weld to see you." She listened for a moment. "Yes, sir, I'll send them in."

Director Armstrong was already coming around his desk as we entered, stopping as he saw me. "Weld. And this is Spen-" He cut himself off, shaking his head. "Metonym, right? I'm sorry, Weld's mentioned you before."

"It's okay. You... get used to it after a while." I tried to smile, but I was feeling a little uneasy; Weld had told me that he and the Director were close, but... he knew about me? Already?"

"Sir." Weld squeezed my hand and let go, letting his posture fall into something vaguely military; the Director watched this, a half-formed smile slipping from his face.

"Ah. Official business." He gestured at the chairs in front of his desk. "Come on, sit down and we can talk."

We sat, and Weld started to explain.

* * *

Director Armstrong's face had shifted through the conversation: curious interest at my power, a spark of _something_ as he listened to Weld talk about what I'd done for him.

And then it was my turn, and as I laid things out, my interactions with the Brockton PRT and the power testing, his face drew grimmer and grimmer until his expression was positively thunderous.

"...Metonym," he said finally, "I'm sorry you had to go through that."

I blinked. "What?"

"What?" he echoed, sounding confused.

"Um... no offense, but... I'm not?" I said. "Honestly, I _like_ where I am right now."

"Director Piggot manipulated the situation to isolate you from the other Wards and a normal social life, and from the sound of it, put you through an ethically questionable testing regimen that failed to identify an aspect of your power. For someone in my position, that's... very troubling."

"But... I'm not isolated, though." I glanced over at Weld. "I got to make friends. I just did it at my own pace."

The Director let out a soft _hmpf_. "Yes, you've apparently been positive influences on each other."

Weld coughed, looked uncomfortable, almost flustered. "Sir, given all of this... would it be all right if Metonym stayed here, until we get things sorted out?"

Director Armstrong looked at Weld, then at me, a scrutinous inspection that made me shift uncomfortably in my seat.

And finally, he nodded. "We'll need to inform your parents," he said, reaching for his phone.

I nodded, gave him my home number; watched as he dialed and hit the speakerphone.

We listened to it ring: once, then half a ring before someone picked up.

"Hebert residence." There was an edge to my dad's voice, a sharpened note of well-used concern.

"Mr. Hebert?"

"That's me."

"Mr. Hebert, this is Director Armstrong, with the Boston PRT-"

" _Do you know where my daughter is?_ " Dad interrupted, desperation overriding any hint of civility.

Both the Director and Weld were looking at me: perplexed, concerned.

I swallowed. "I'm here, Dad."

The line was silent.

"Dad?"

"Taylor Anne Hebert," my father said finally. "I came home and found the back door to our home broken and a note on the table that reads _'Out saving the world, back later_.' At the same time a _goddamn Endbringer fight_ is happening."

Oh.

Oh yeah, I did that.

"I have been worried _sick_ about you, and when I went to the PRT they were _distinctly_ unhelpful," Dad continued, "so, you are going to come home and you are going to _stay_ home because you are _grounded_."

"But-"

"No."

"Alexandria was _in our backyard,_ Dad! What was I supposed to do?"

"Not go fight _an Endbringer_ , S-Taylor! You don't even have a power-" He broke off and we heard him exhale. "You are coming home and maybe when both of us are calmer, you can explain your decisions."

Director Armstrong hesitantly spoke up. "Mr. Hebert, about that..."

"About _what?_ "

"Your daughter has another power that didn't show up during testing," the Director said diplomatically. "And with what she's told me about what's happened to her, along with how the department up there is dealing with both of your situations... well, this call was _originally_ to secure permission for her to stay in Boston until we get this all figured out."

The phone made a staticky, rustling sound as Dad covered the microphone and started to swear.

It turns out he knew a lot of swears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter brought to you by the very-bingeable [Limbo (The Undersiders Strange Summer)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25090579). Give it a read.


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